In 1986, a group of struggling artists, looking for an outlet during a tough economic downturn, built a giant wooden stick figure, dragged it onto a San Francisco beach, and set it on fire while police and onlookers watched in disbelief. Forty years later, Burning Man has become the ultimate festival—a massive celebration of music, art, and self-expression that draws tens of thousands to the Nevada desert every summer in search of community, emotional release, and spiritual connection. It’s a pilgrimage for both bohemians and billionaires, a symbol of a certain kind of quirky hipster culture, and a countercultural institution struggling with the tension between its free-spirited ideals, corporate realities, and the regular presence of controversial figures like conservative strategist Grover Norquist and Elon Musk’s brother.
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The only real way to understand what Burning Man is all about, it seems, is to experience it yourself—first in your imagination, then literally, once you’re fully immersed in Black Rock City’s psychedelic, anything-goes atmosphere. “It’s such an immersive experience that it seems impossible to capture on film or explain what it feels like to be inside a city that exists for just one week, a city that’s imagined, built, and sustained entirely by the people in it,” says Jehane Noujaim, co-director of The Man Will Burn, a new documentary series that premiered on HBO this month about the festival.
Noujaim, who earned widespread praise for her documentaries on Al Jazeera’s coverage of the 2003 Iraq invasion and the NXIVM sex cult, didn’t set out to document Burning Man’s steampunk world. Her curiosity was sparked while trying to clear footage she had shot at the festival for The Great Hack, her documentary on the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, which used an opening scene featuring one of the whistleblowers at a makeshift temple on the site. “I spent about eight months trying to get permission to use that shot—the longest I’ve ever waited for a single shot, which is crazy,” she says. “I didn’t even know Burning Man had a CEO or a board.”
Once she was properly introduced and trusted, Noujaim learned about a huge film archive that the festival had been privately building since its early days, hoping that someday an independent filmmaker might turn it into something. That was enough to hook her, and she brought Vikram Gandhi, the filmmaker behind Barry and Kumaré, on board as co-director. Their collaboration resulted in a deep dive told in four parts, tracing the full story of Burning Man’s unique social experiment as the festival faces Covid, a board revolt, and the effects of global warming.
Noujaim and Gandhi frame Burning Man as a love story between Larry Harvey, a protest artist who saw the festival’s future when it was still a small gathering for Bay Area eccentrics, and Marian Goodell, his longtime partner and right hand who has carried that vision forward as festival CEO since Harvey died at age 70 from complications of a stroke in 2018.
Viewers meet Goodell as she’s struggling with the decision to cancel the festival for the second year in a row because of the pandemic. Kimbal Musk, a major presence on the Burning Man board, sees her caution not as prudence but as an opportunity for a leadership change, rallying a group of unhappy board members to his side. Meanwhile, individual festivalgoers weigh the risks of joining a renegade gathering determined to return to the desert no matter what, or staying home as Burning Man adapts to the virtual age.
To Burning Man organizers, it seemed like the worst possible time to have cameras around—and on more than a few occasions, they told the filmmakers there wouldn’t be much to shoot because the festival wasn’t going to happen. But Noujaim and Gandhi pushed for access anyway. “It was a really important time to go deep and try to understand what the placeGandhi says, “It was about what Burning Man really meant, and why so many people around the world care about it so deeply—enough to push through a pandemic and still show up even when it was canceled. When we started filming at the renegade burn, we had no idea if it would be a success or another Fyre Festival.”
Burning Man is guided by principles like decommodification, radical inclusion, and civic responsibility. Since the early 2000s, the festival has taken place at Black Rock City, a semi-circular community about 100 miles from Reno. It’s built up and taken down each year without leaving a trace—”swept away in the first big wind,” as co-founder Harvey, who is deeply respected, puts it in the documentary. But it’s the spiritual grip the festival seems to have on longtime attendees that can make their devotion look like delusion to outsiders—so much so that mentioning Burning Man on a dating profile is often seen as a red flag.
“My first film was about me pretending to be a religious leader and starting a fake religion,” Gandhi says, referring to Kumaré. “All the thinking I did while making that film was about creating a story, a creation myth, some kind of sacred space—not necessarily rules, but teachings. It’s very similar to what Harvey designed for Burning Man. But the big difference is that people come up with their own belief systems. It has all the elements of our religions—place, self-reference, rituals—but really no dogma.”
There’s a lot to admire about Burning Man’s inclusive nature: peace activists hanging out with gun enthusiasts, Google co-founder Sergey Brin working a cafeteria shift during rush hour, and Norquist—one of the architects of trickle-down economics—praising Black Rock City’s cashless barter system. “The first day I was there filming, I sat around a fire next to a platoon leader I had interviewed for my film Control Room about Al Jazeera,” Noujaim says. Still, a community built on letting everyone find their own truth inevitably leaves room for blind spots.
Despite all of Burning Man’s humanistic values, it has long struggled to shake the perception—and the reality—that it mainly serves white people who have the time and money to take a week off around Labor Day to reconnect with their inner child in the desert. The film does try to push back against that image, following a Black former paratrooper on a Burning Man journey to deal with his PTSD from combat. Still, all the talk of community, gifting, and radical inclusion barely lasts beyond the trip home, washing off in the first hot shower. The experience on the playa has become more divided—backpackers enduring the elements in pole tents while A-listers and influencers spend tens of thousands on air-conditioned RVs with all the comforts of a luxury spa.
Even the non-profit behind Burning Man has started to look like a money grab to festivalgoers who see its $60 million operating budget and large real estate holdings, and wonder how much higher ticket prices can go in this economy. In the end, Black Rock City seems like just another victim of gentrification—a magical sandbox for cosplayers to act out socialist fantasies that would never work in their own neighborhoods. “It’s almost like Burning Man has become expensive because the world is expensive,” Gandhi says. “But actually, the ticket is probably cheaper than Coachella—which is, what, around $600 now? Still, I agree that it’s changed, and money has become a much bigger part of it.”
The Man Will Burn could have focused on the festival’s more scandalous aspects to appeal to viewers who now expect documentaries to simply entertain: the power struggles, the excessive nudity and psychedelic use, the attendees who died in the desert, and the heavy rains that turned the playa into a muddy mess, leading cable news viewers to call for a National Guard rescue.Instead, Noujaim and Gandhi offer a thorough and balanced look at life during the festival. It will give some people serious FOMO, while others will feel like they’ve already experienced enough of Burning Man without ever needing to go.
Either way, the long, strange journey might be worth taking. “One of the most awe-inspiring things is that you’ve never seen so many resources put into something that only lasts a week and then gets burned,” Gandhi says. “It’s a spiritual experience you can see in two ways: as rich people burning money, or as a rare ritual in the world that you might not be part of. But we don’t really have things like that anymore. This event exists just for itself, for the feeling.”
The Man Will Burn is available on HBO Max.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs for the docuseries Its a spiritual experience broken down by beginner and advanced levels
BeginnerLevel Questions
Q What is Its a spiritual experience about
A Its a docuseries that goes behind the scenes of Burning Man to show the wild chaotic and beautiful reality of the event It focuses on the people the art and the spiritual side of the madness
Q Do I need to have been to Burning Man to watch this
A Not at all The series is designed for everyone If youve never been its a great way to see what the hype is about If you have been it will feel very familiar
Q Is the series just about parties and drugs
A No While Burning Man has a party reputation the series focuses more on the community the art installations the harsh desert conditions and the personal transformations people go through Its about the why behind the party
Q How long is the series
A The length varies by platform but it is typically a limited series with 36 episodes each around 4560 minutes long
Q Where can I watch Its a spiritual experience
A Check major streaming platforms or the official Burning Man Project website Availability changes so a quick search will tell you
Advanced Deeper Questions
Q Does the series actually cover the spiritual side or is it just a travel show
A It genuinely explores the spiritual side It shows how people find meaning connection and even healing in the desert It covers topics like radical selfreliance gifting and the temporary community that forms
Q Does it show the negative sides of Burning Man like the dust storms or the chaos
A Yes its very honest Youll see the brutal heat the whiteout dust storms the portapotty lines and the logistical breakdowns The spectacular chaos isnt just a taglineits a core part of the story
