“Afire” was not the film that Mr. Petzold set out to make. After presenting his 2020 film “Undine” in Paris, Mr. Petzold and Paula Beer, the film’s lead (she also stars in “Afire”) came down with Covid-19. While convalescing in Berlin, he binge-watched films by the French New Wave director Éric Rohmer and read stories by Anton Chekhov. In that first pandemic spring, Mr. Petzold’s thoughts turned to summer and to summer films, a genre that, according to him, has not properly existed in Germany since “People on Sunday” (1930). “And then I thought about the aftermath, National Socialism, which destroyed everything: the German summers, the German youth, the German bodies, the poetry.

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Persons: ”, Petzold, Georges Simenon’s, Paula Beer, “, Mr, Éric Rohmer, Anton Chekhov, Rohmer’s, Pauline Organizations: French New, “ Locations: Paris, Berlin, Germany, Wannsee, Weimar