Annual Top Films Lists

Top 200 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2023: #12. Christian Petzold’s Afire

Published on January 19, 2023

Afire

So deserving and so close at cracking our top 10, the great German filmmaker Christian Petzold continues at his break-neck speed of quantity and quality. Production on Afire (formerly going by The Red Sky) took place last summer in the month of June in Germany. Paula Beer returns for a second outing with Petzold, and we also find Thomas Schubert, Langston Uibel, Enno Trebs and Matthias Brandt in what is the second part in fairy tale trilogy and focuses on passion between men. Schramm Film Koerner & Weber’s Florian Koerner von Gustorf and Michael Weber produced.

Gist: A small holiday house by the baltic sea. The days are hot and it hasn’t rained in weeks. Four young people come together, friends old and new. As the parched forests around them begin to ignite, so do their emotions. Happiness, lust and love; but also jealousies, resentments and tensions. Meanwhile the forests burn. And before long, the flames are there.

Release Date/Prediction: If it indeed has an April domestic release in Germany then we are looking at a guaranteed spot for a run at the Golden Bear.

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).