Afire

“A tonic for moviegoers” The New York Times
Perhaps Germany’s greatest living director, Christian Petzold, returns with a sophisticated and dryly comic summer tale of intellectuals by the shore. Best friends Leon and Felix head to a summer cottage for a working holiday, but are surprised to find it double booked, occupied by Nadja. Needless to say, hard work gives way to interpersonal drama.

The director of Barbara, Phoenix, Transit and Undine, Petzold has a unique way with metaphor but also a close eye for the literal facts of the history we’re living through. Yet this is new territory for him, reminiscent of the brittle comedies of Éric Rohmer and Noah Baumbach. An essential new piece of European cinema.