HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

''Afire'' () is a 2023 German
drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. The drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular ...
directed by Christian Petzold, starring Thomas Schubert, Paula Beer, Langston Uibel and Enno Trebs. The relationship drama focuses on four people sharing a holiday home on the
Baltic Sea The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by the countries of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the North European Plain, North and Central European Plain regions. It is the ...
. The film won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the
73rd Berlin International Film Festival The 73rd annual Berlin International Film Festival, usually called the Berlinale (), took place from 16 to 26 February 2023. It was the first completely in-person Berlinale since 70th Berlin International Film Festival, the 70th in 2020. The fe ...
, where it had its world premiere on 22 February 2023. It was released theatrically in Germany on 20 April 2023. In August 2023, it was shortlisted as the German submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film for the
96th Academy Awards The 96th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), took place on March 10, 2024, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles. During the gala, the AMPAS presented Academy Awards (commonl ...
.


Plot

Friends Felix and Leon are driving to Felix's family holiday home on the
Baltic Sea The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by the countries of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the North European Plain, North and Central European Plain regions. It is the ...
not far from
Ahrenshoop Ahrenshoop is a municipality in the Vorpommern-Rügen district, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany on the Fischland-Darß-Zingst peninsula of the Baltic Sea. It used to be a small fishing village, but is today known for its tourism and as a holi ...
when their car breaks down. After walking through the forest with their luggage, they arrive at the house to find it unexpectedly inhabited by Nadja, whose presence is obvious though they do not meet her. Her romantic trysts keep them up at night, causing Leon to resent her. Over the course of their vacation forest fires are mentioned, first distantly, then approaching. Leon spends his time fussing over the manuscript of his second novel, while Felix is less hurried about completing his photography portfolio. Within a couple days, they have both met Nadja, who is kind and accommodating. Despite this, Leon continues to be frustrated by her. Meanwhile, Felix strikes up a friendship with her and her lover, Devid, a lifeguard at the nearby beach. The emotions among the four intensify as Leon broods and resists interacting with the others. Felix and Devid develop a romantic and sexual relationship. Nadja offers friendship to Leon but he struggles to accept it. After much consternation, he decides to grant her request to read his manuscript, which she finds inferior and she tells him that he knows its poor quality. Leon does not take this well and isolates himself for the rest of the evening. When Leon's publisher Helmut arrives so they can review the manuscript together, Leon grows even more despondent as Helmut connects more with Felix, Devid, and especially Nadja, who is revealed to be a doctoral candidate in literature, not the seasonal hotel employee Leon thought. After a dinner that is tense for Leon and enjoyable for the rest, the forest fires are close enough that ash begins to fall just as Devid and Felix finally leave to retrieve their abandoned car. Helmut suffers a medical emergency. Nadja is quick to act, driving Helmut's tiny rental car to the hospital. Leon follows on foot. On the way, he sees wild boar fleeing the fire. After watching a boar die, the fire begins to crest the hill and he runs. In darkness, he reaches the hospital to join Nadja, asleep on a bench. When they wake in the morning and find Helmut, he shares private moments with both of them. Nadja asks about his health, which he has lied about so as not to trouble them, and informs him of Leon's distress. Helmut comforts Leon, advising him to abandon his work-in-progress but assuring him of eventual success. Helmut promises to help him as long as his condition allows. On the walk back to the house, Nadja offers Leon comfort which Leon angrily rejects, leading Nadja to castigate him for his self-centeredness before leaving him alone on the beach. Remorseful, he follows her back to the house where he begins to confess romantic feelings for her, just as she sees two police officers in the backyard. Nadja approaches them and they inform her that Devid and Felix were found burned to death by the fires. Nadja and Leon go to see their bodies and see their charred corpses intertwined in death. Nadja has a profound emotional reaction, but Leon cannot absorb the reality, instead thinking about other coupled corpses throughout history, such as those found at Pompeii. She leaves without him, and by the time he reaches the vacation house she has left. He goes to the beach and sobs, looking at the
bioluminescence Bioluminescence is the emission of light during a chemiluminescence reaction by living organisms. Bioluminescence occurs in multifarious organisms ranging from marine vertebrates and invertebrates, as well as in some Fungus, fungi, microorgani ...
in the sea, something he had refused to do earlier. Some time later, Leon is in Helmut's hospital room as Helmut reads Leon's new manuscript back to him, a work of
autofiction Autofiction is, in literary criticism, a form of fictionalized autobiography. Definition In autofiction, an author may decide to recount their life in the Third-person narrative, third person, to modify significant details and characters, use in ...
based on the time he shared with Felix, Nadja, and Devid. Together they look at photos Felix took that summer which Helmut wants to use as accompanying artwork for the novel. Helmut has Leon leave when a medic appears to administer a treatment. Waiting outside, Leon sees Nadja arriving, presumably to visit Helmut. He steps out from hiding and the two share a moment of mutual recognition.


Cast

* Thomas Schubert as Leon * Paula Beer as Nadja * Langston Uibel as Felix * Enno Trebs as Devid *
Matthias Brandt Matthias Brandt (born 7 October 1961) is a German actor and audiobook narrator. He has appeared in more than seventy films since 1989. Early life Brandt was born in West Berlin. He is the youngest of the three sons of the former German Chancel ...
as Helmut * Esther Ash as Ms. König, hotel manager *
Jennipher Antoni Jennipher Antoni (born 6 April 1976) is a German actress. Life Jennipher (Jenny) Antoni is the daughter of Malte Antoni (1944–1998) and actress Carmen-Maja Antoni (born 1945). She studied Japanese and Russian at the Humboldt University i ...
as Mrs. Roland, cashier *
Jonas Dassler Jonas Dassler (born March 22, 1996) is a German stage and film actor. Life Dassler was born on March 22, 1996, in Remscheid, Germany. Beginning in the eighth grade he participated in the theatre club at the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt high school. After ...
* Marieke Zwart as firefighter


Production

In October 2020, Christian Petzold revealed his next film, a gay love story. He revealed that he wants to make a series of films loosely inspired by the classical elements of water, earth, fire and air. Starting with ''
Undine Undines (; also ondines) are a category of elemental beings associated with water, stemming from the alchemical writings of Paracelsus. Later writers developed the undine into a water nymph in its own right, and it continues to live in modern l ...
'' in 2020, a tale of water nymph, fire will rise for ''Afire''. The film was shot from 28 June 2022 to 17 August 2022 in
Ahrenshoop Ahrenshoop is a municipality in the Vorpommern-Rügen district, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany on the Fischland-Darß-Zingst peninsula of the Baltic Sea. It used to be a small fishing village, but is today known for its tourism and as a holi ...
.


Release and reception

''Afire'' had its premiere on 22 February 2023 as part of the
73rd Berlin International Film Festival The 73rd annual Berlin International Film Festival, usually called the Berlinale (), took place from 16 to 26 February 2023. It was the first completely in-person Berlinale since 70th Berlin International Film Festival, the 70th in 2020. The fe ...
, in competition. It was released in cinemas on 20 April 2023. The film also made it to 'Perlak' section of the
71st San Sebastián International Film Festival The 71st San Sebastián International Film Festival ran 22–30 September 2023 in San Sebastián, Gipuzkoa, Spain. The awards were announced on 30 September 2023, with '' The Rye Horn'' winning the Golden Shell, being the first film directed by ...
held from 22 to 30 September 2023. On the
review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews and ratings of products and services, such as films, books, video games, music, software, hardware, or cars. This system then stores the reviews to be used for supporting a website where user ...
website
Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...
, the film holds an approval rating of 91% based on 125 reviews, with an average rating of 7.9/10. On
Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...
, it has a weighted average score of 82 out of 100 based on 28 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Nicholas Bell in IonCinema.com graded the film 3.5/5 and wrote, "the real pleasure is in Petzold’s writing of his characters, and there’s an oddly satisfying authenticity to the discomforts and aggressions caused by Leon’s pretension-as-self-defense moments." Ben Croll reviewing for IndieWire graded the film B− and wrote, "Petzold tries to take the air out of a pompous windbag, and more often than not succeeds to delightful and caustic effect." Peter Bradshaw of ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' rated the film with 2 stars out of 5 and wrote, "The tonal change is not really convincing, and I wished that the film's potential for lighter comedy had been developed more. Even so, it’s a strong performance from Schubert.


Accolades


References


External links

*
''Afire''
at Berlinale
''Afire''
at Film portal
''Afire''
at Crew United * {{Silver Bear for Jury Grand Prix 2023 films 2023 drama films 2023 LGBTQ-related films 2020s German-language films Films about wildfires Films about writers Films directed by Christian Petzold German drama films German LGBTQ-related films German independent films Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize winners German-language drama films German-language independent films