In German. 103 minute running time but felt like a lifetime. This movie was shirt. Petzold has made a boring, pretentious movie and casts his girlfriend (Paula Beer) as the main female character, once again … awful, I hated this, true, I fast forwarded through most of it once I realized (within minutes of starting it) that it was terrible. Let me find an honest critic:

Maxwell Rabb writes: “this tired trope emerges as an uninspired caricature of a manbaby with few revelations or tensions that make it worthwhile … Afire’s deepest flaw is similar to Leon’s: a failure to self-reflect, and, in turn, the shortcomings result in a tedious investigation of the tortured artist … Petzold’s cinematic architecture feels built by flimsy plot devices that mindlessly carry flat characters from scene to scene … Afire is an imbroglio, a vapid exercise, as Petzold abandons clarity in favor of character-driven complexities. However, the trouble is that almost nothing happens that’s moving enough to justify this opacity.”

It’s just shit, do not waste your time. John Farr did me dirty by recommending this.