Afire

Director: Christian Petzold

2023 / 102min / DCP

Writer Leon (Thomas Schubert) and photographer Felix (Langston Uibel), two friends setting out for a vacation on the shores of the Baltic Sea, are disarmed upon finding an unexpected guest at Felix’s family’s vacation home, Nadja (Paula Beer), a young woman whose blunt honesty and habit of caustic Socratic questioning both fascinate the pompous Leon and lead to him developing grave doubts about his adequacy as a novelist, while Felix’s eyes have meanwhile wandered to local lifeguard Devid (Enno Trebs). Winner of the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at last year’s Berlin International Film Festival, Petzold’s film is a work of blistering emotional conflagrations played out in the shadow of encroaching environmental catastrophe—a raging forest fire that threatens to consume the quartet, if they don’t destroy one another first.

Part of Summer at Sea