AFIRE (Melbourne IFF 2023) – Review by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
Another Christian Petzold film, another Berlinale award winning banger. His is a steady history of home town wins at the revered German festival, starting as far back as 2003’s Wolfsburg, with Barbara (2012) and Undine (2020) also winning major awards, establishing a strong history that this year’s Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize for Afire continues. Unarguably one of the country’s strongest filmmakers working today, Afire reveals Petzold as someone who is comfortably at the top of their game. It’s a film so technically tight and made with such integrity and precision that it’s a struggle to keep one’s jaw from dropping; it’s an absolute delight to watch.
Afire follows Leon (Thomas Schubert), who travels with his friend Felix (Langston Uibel) to a sleepy country home on Germany’s Fischland-Darß-Zingst peninsula to tackle professional projects with the potential to change both of their lives. Felix is pulling together a photography folio with the hopes of being offered a place at art school, while Leon is struggling with the pressure of writing a follow-up to a successful earlier novel. To the latter’s mortification, however, upon arrival he discovers that he and Felix will be sharing the home with another visitor, the carefree Nadja (Paula Beer, who had previously worked with Petzold on Transit in 2018 and won the Silver Bear for Best Actress for her starring role in Undine). As wildfire sweeps the region, tensions escalate as Leon’s feelings of personal and professional limbo become harder for his peers to ignore.
Afire is a film about a main character who painfully and somewhat paradoxically learns that he is not the main character. Leon is, to be clear, an unambiguously awful person: he is rude, selfish and broadly tone deaf when it comes to reading a room. And yet, brought to life as he is in a superb performance by Thomas Schubert, he is nevertheless also completely captivating. Masterfully weaving the stories of Leon and his friends with the broader wildfire plot, Afire seamlessly blends the micro and the macro as this perfectly paced film moves towards its thoughtful, emotionally intelligent climax. While at this point of Petzold’s career further proof of his talents are not really required, Afire regardless reveals him as an extraordinarily gifted and ceaselessly original filmmaker.
NOTE: Without actors and writers, we wouldn’t have movies. This review was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes in the United States, and the author of this review supports them unequivocally.
