Afire

"Deceptive simplicity makes way for illuminating depths."

— David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

"Petzold’s latest, Afire, unfurls with all the page-turning seduction of a gripping novella."

— Rory O'Connor, The Film Stage

"Afire is the uncompromising work of a master not only on conceptual and stylistic levels but also in terms of his emotional politics."

— Savina Petkova, 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."

— Guy Lodge, Variety

"Like all of Petzold’s recent pictures, Afire draws you in confidently and prepares its knockout emotional punch with scrupulousness and a vivid sense of surprise."

— Glenn Kenny, RogerEbert.com

"Director Christian Petzold puts his own spin on the old message, by inviting the audience to laugh and cry as four lives get intertwined in a very honest and human way."

— Marco Vito Oddo, Collider

"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."

— Manohla Dargis, The New York 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."

— Barry Hertz, The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

"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."

— Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

"On an obvious level, it’s a character study of the artist as an insufferable young prig, a type that, as Petzold no doubt knows, is familiar to the point of cliché. But as the film unfolds, and boldly shifts tone, the character suggests the larger theme of struggling to stay humane in a broken world."

— Liam Lacey, Original-Cin

"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."

— Tomris Laffly, TheWrap

"While, on one level, it seems to belong to international cinema’s increasingly prevalent strain of climate catastrophe dramas, on another it’s a brittle character piece, a comedy of social embarrassment with a dark and ultimately tragic undertow. Until, that is, a coda ties it off in another register entirely."

— Jonathan Romney, Screen Daily