Quest for Fire (French: La Guerre du feu) is a 1981 prehistoric fantasy adventure film directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, written by Gérard Brach and starring Everett McGill, Ron Perlman, Nameer El-Kadi and Rae Dawn Chong.

After being forced out of their home due to a violent battle with the ape-like Wagabu, the Ulam become terrified when their fire is accidentally put out while seeking refuge in a marsh.

During their journey, the trio encounters several dangers, including the Kzamm, a tribe of more primitive-looking cannibals who possess fire.

Gaw and Amoukar lure most of the Kzamm away from their encampment while Naoh kills the remaining warriors, though not before being bitten on the genitals, causing him agony.

At first, Naoh is subjected to several forms of humiliation by the Ivaka, including being forced to mate with the high-status women of the tribe, who are large and big-breasted.

Not long before they reach the marsh where they started the journey, the three are ambushed by rivals from within the Ulam, who want to steal the fire and bring it back themselves.

Special language forms were created by novelist Anthony Burgess, while patterns of movement and gesture were developed by anthropologist Desmond Morris.

[3] The more advanced language of the Ivaka was largely based on those of the Cree and Inuit native peoples of northern Canada, which caused some amusement among those in this group who saw the film, since the words have little to do with the plot.

[4] The Ulam are portrayed as stereotypical, Neanderthal-style cavemen, in an intermediate stage of development compared to the ape-like Wagabu, on one hand, and the culturally more advanced Ivaka on the other.

The movie was filmed on location in the Scottish Highlands and Tsavo National Park and Lake Magadi in Kenya.

When it came time to film them in Iceland, strict laws about transporting four-legged animals into the country delayed their arrival.

[8] Roger Ebert gave the film three and a half stars out of four, writing that he saw it as a "borderline comedy" in the opening scenes, but "then these characters and their quest began to grow on me, and by the time the movie was over I cared very much about how their lives would turn out.

"[12] Pauline Kael of The New Yorker wrote, "It's almost impossible to guess what the tone of this ape-man love story (based on a French novel, by J. H. Rosny, Sr.) is intended to be.

In an essay for the journal American Anthropologist, Brown University linguistics professor Philip Lieberman described as "absurd" the mixture of different levels of advancement among different tribes living in close proximity.