Make Time for This - GSPN's Podcast for Pop Culture and Other Things · GSPN, Blue Wire

Christian Petzold and Paula Beer return with sizzling Afire

·1 hr 5 min·6 clips

Petzold conceived Afire while sick with COVID, inspired by Eric Rohmer and a lost German summer movie tradition.

Adam McGee and Andrew Snyder host the film podcast Captured in Celluloid on Make Time for This, dedicating this episode to German filmmaker Christian Petzold's 2023 film Afire. Both hosts count Petzold among their favorite working directors: Andrew has two Petzold films — Phoenix and Transit — on his personal list of the 25 best films of the last 15 years. They trace their Petzold journey: Adam has seen most of his filmography including his early state-funded German television films, while Andrew came to Petzold just two years prior when they recorded an episode on Undine. The hosts discuss Petzold's distinctive directorial signature — a consistency of atmosphere and tone that spans his entire career regardless of setting — and how recognizable it is. Afire represents a genuine departure from his recent run of films: it is set in contemporary Germany (not a temporally displaced alternate world like Transit or a historical period like Barbara), it opens with unexpected lightness and humor, and it deals with natural phenomena — fire — in ways that create dream-like and nightmarish undertones characteristic of Petzold. The origins of Afire are traced through Petzold's own press tour story: while promoting Undine at Venice (likely), he contracted COVID from an interpreter who collapsed at a screening. During his recovery he watched the entire collected works of Eric Rohmer on Blu-ray, which inspired him to make Germany's first genuine summer film. Petzold traces the absence of the German summer film back to People on Sunday, the 1930 silent film that was essentially the debut of the German filmmaking generation that fled to Hollywood ahead of World War II. Both Paula Beer and the story's romantic and existential summer dynamic carry Rohmer's influence throughout. The tone is deeply cinephilic, conversational, and enthusiastic. The audience is serious film fans and lovers of European cinema.

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