NEW RELEASE
Set against the backdrop of a seaside town threatened by
encroaching wildfires, Christian Petzold’s latest is a breezy, often funny, yet
emotionally layered melodrama of creative and romantic insecurities along the
German Riviera. The film centers around Leon (Thomas Schubert), a disgruntled
novelist struggling to finish his manuscript while traveling with his
photographer friend (Langston Uibel) to a vacation home near the Baltic Sea,
where they’re met by an unexpected third house guest, Nadja (Paula Beer; Undine, Transit),
whose presence distracts Leon as much as it cringingly exposes his
self-obsessed bubble. Full of sunkissed tints and nocturnal
blues, Afire finds the director operating with a deceptively light
touch, but what starts as a hangout comedy gradually opens up into something
entirely more surprising and psychologically complex. Winner of the Silver Bear
Grand Jury Prize at the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival.
Score: 3.7
91%
"A riveting look at complicated relationships, the well-acted Afire finds Christian Petzold working in an arguably lighter but still notably ambitious vein."
ROTTEN TOMATOES
"Few movies this year will be as quietly sizzling
as German filmmaker Christian Petzold’s “Afire,” a novelistic and sophisticated
character study that kindles inside a chamber piece, as languid as a relaxed
summer day and as heartbreaking as the end of a short-lived summer love."
The Wrap
"Afire is the uncompromising work of a master not
only on conceptual and stylistic levels but also in terms of his emotional
politics."
The Playlist
"It’s the film’s great, disorienting structural
risks, its humoring of human untidiness and confusion, that make it so subtly
thrilling and moving."
Variety
"Throughout this movie, an absorbing, barbed and
frequently funny evisceration of artistic ego, Petzold practices a deft and
disarming sleight of hand, using key details to keep the viewer off balance and
deliver a stinging rebuke to Leon’s myopia."
Los Angeles Times
"The dramedy of manners is as rich and rewarding an
experience as any of Petzold’s more ambitious films. Afire arrives like a calm
wind, and leaves with everything and everyone perfectly scorched."
The Globe and Mail
" The German filmmaker Christian Petzold’s spiky and
at times mordantly funny Afire is a tonic for moviegoers tired of nice,
squishable, likable, relatable dull and dull characters."
The New York Times