German stage and film actress Paula Beer first gained international recognition in François Ozon's Frantz (2016). Since then, she has often worked with director Christian Petzold to critical acclaim. Their fruitful collaborations resulted in Transit (2018), Undine (2020), and now Afire (2023).
In Afire, Beer plays Nadja, a love interest of a self-absorbed young writer with a huge writer's block in the summer spent by the Baltic Sea. At a glance, the movie seems like a departure from Petzold's normal, serious themed filmography, a German 'summer movie,' if you will.
With Beer as his muse, though, it morphs into more usual Petzold territory as it plays out: secrets, loneliness, the creative process, and self-reflection, and of course, an acute observation of the world facing crisis. It's a delicious Petzold film, as usual.
Beer was in town for the Tribeca Film Festival to promote Afire and I jumped at the chance to talk to the lovely, intelligent actress about her methods and working with Petzold.
Afire opens in theaters Friday, July 14, in New York and Los Angeles, via Sideshow and Janus Films. A national roll-out will follow. Visit the official U.S. site to buy tickets and for more information.
Screen Anarchy: I saw AFIRE about a week before the smoke from the Canadian wildfire reached New York and turned the sky an eerie dark orange color. And I am flabbergasted by how prescient the film is! Everything Christian Petzold makes, it’s so prescient, whether it’s the reemergence of fascism, gentrification or climate catastrophe. I had to add an addendum to my review after experiencing that thick, dangerous air first-hand.
So, I had a chance to talk to Christian remotely after he did UNDINE and this was when Covid was still happening. He told me that after Covid hit, he abandoned a dystopian project he was working on, to get away from all the depressing things, and decided to make a summer movie, about young people in love, with you in mind. How did it come about?
Paula Beer: The weird thing is that we were in Paris for the press for Undine. Everything turned out really good. Everyone was happy about the movie.
It started playing in Berlin, and we were expecting to open in Paris as well. But our distributor said, “We have to wait for a speech from Macron (about the Covid situation) tomorrow morning.” So OK. But then the next day they told us that they were sorry that they couldn’t bring the movie to the cinemas in April (this was March 2020) that we had to cancel everything and try it again in September. So we knew the situation was getting very serious.
When we got back to Berlin, we both got infected; maybe in Paris, who knows, but we got back home and were sick. So we stayed at home and waited. Then the first lockdown in Berlin came in the middle of March. And then Christian told me that he was working on the script for the other movie but he told me that the world is in crisis and that he couldn’t do a depressing movie right now.
He told me the story of Afire while eating falafel together. He told me about the summer and young people in love. He asked me: “What do you think?” During the pandemic we had so much time, so we both watched a Rohmer box set that someone gave him as a gift. I understood his wish for taking all the drama of the world away and trying to introduce this light ambience to the world. But of course it’s Christian, so I knew it would dig into a deeper level, not some random light story.
Christian has a really steady career; there’s no movie that you’d think that it’s off or unlike him in his filmography. He has two kids who are a bit younger than me and finishing their school during Covid. He is such an open-hearted and open-minded person, and he sees what’s going on and what their concerns are and adapts that into a story.
It really amazes me. From the very first time he told me about that story, I knew that it was going to be something new. I can’t really say how, but the movie just felt different. I sensed his film language moving a little bit.
You’ve done three films with Christian now. How is his directing style different from any other directors you worked with?
It’s completely different. Before I started doing Transit with him, people told me that he has a very unique way of shooting. I was like, “ok, everyone says that. so there must be something true about it.” And as soon as I got to know the production and other people working as a crew for Transit, there was a different vibe.
It didn’t have the pressure of a normal film set. There’s no big office with a lot of people. It’s always about the movie and the story: everyone is very engaged and very focused on that. And Cristian collects people around who are really good at what they do, but also calm and easy-going.
I go, yeah this is a very good atmosphere to work in. There’s none of the usual onset frenzy. It’s more like, 'cool, we have a good script. Let’s make a good movie out of it.'
One thing we do as a crew and cast is to travel to the shooting locations together, without anything there. Just for us to have an impression of what the place is like.
That’s interesting.
For this movie, it helped a lot. It takes place in the Baltic Sea. And we were shooting on a private island. There were no people at all. And it was just raw nature; peaks and forests, as you’ve seen in the movie. It's what nature could be if people weren’t destroying everything.
And being in the sea -- yes, the sea itself -- the sand and the trees, what impact all of that has on a human being! This is what summer feels like; we have a lot of time. It's hot. No pressure, no stress, no nothing.
And then we have reading rehearsals. It's always important to see how everyone sees the character. For me, it was very important to see Tomas [Schubert], who was reading Leon. It was amazing to see because Leon is such a hard character to like and to follow. When he read it, I thought, wow, that’s enough. No worries, it’s going to be an amazing one…
You knew Tomas before this movie. You’ve worked together before?
Yes, when we were eighteen, a long time ago. [They were in Austrian director Andreas Prochaska's Dark Valley together.] He played so well in that movie.
Then for the shooting, we would rehearse in the morning: it’s Christian and his assistant, and all the actors in costume, and no other people involved. We have coffee and tea, we look at the scene; we go to make-up and they prepare the set, we come back, everything is ready, we shoot, one direction, usually one take, change set-up, another shot from another angle, Then we have lunch. His set is very structured and very well organized. It helps you to focus and not —
Pressure
Yeah, and there’s nothing to distract you from focusing on what’s important.
Was AFIRE all shot on location?
The house was close to Berlin. And that’s why it was important that we went to shooting locations before. We saw the sea and then we came back to Berlin to start shooting. Everything else was shot near the Baltic Sea.
Among the roles you have played, how was Nadja, compared to others, in terms of preparation?
It’s different with each character. Each character requires different preparation and sometimes it seems so clear but I don’t get anything, others it’s the other way around and just great and you have fun. So it is hard to say how I prepare for a certain role.
Every new character I play, I go back to the beginning, that I don’t know how or where to start because it feels like a new job with every character. I will need to understand what I need, to play this character.
Because I don’t think there is no…formula, to say 'this is how to create a character.' It’s how I play this character.
It helped me a lot working with Christian two times before because I got to see how things work on his set and now I kind of know how or where…oh, I am blanking, it must be the jetlag ... [laughs] … where I will be ending up with him.
I know how his process of filming goes. And this helps me a lot to free myself. I am always like, “I have to prepare this and I have to prepare that. I have to be super prepared,” but his process gives me a lot of freedom, and with Nadja, I can go with what I feel at that moment. This is Nadja, this vibe, now I just experience and enter her realm and react to other actors and their energy, off of my costumes and places. It's like an energetic trip through a movie.
The reason I asked is, in UNDINE, there is this long monologue scene where Undine leads the tour in a museum, and I was wondering how you managed that. That must’ve taken a long, long time to prepare.
Yeah. When I was reading the script. I called Christian and said, “well you are making jokes right? You just don’t want me for the part!” In a way it’s very helpful to…. First for an actress, it’s a job to do. But then, the story that she tells is her text. She wrote that story. So it tells you a lot about her.
Like how she sees things, how she is telling about it. But when I see the room where we are shooting that scene, it’s like diving through history. And I just loved doing all the preparations. She is from water, to our city and lives with human beings, she is searching for love and she doesn’t find it, she has to kill and go back to water.
For me, it was, "OK, she actually lives in two worlds." The other world, which we don't see in the movie, is where she is most of the time, so I want to get to know this world in water. Then how she sees you; she knows Berlin from when the first house was built there. Because Berlin was this watery…
Swamp.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So she was there before the city was built. So she is not doing a presentation but telling her whole story of what she experienced and I love the idea of her explaining things. “So this bridge was built in so and so and this guy was doing this…” She was telling what she saw.
In Petzold’s characters, especially female characters, there’s always some sort of secret in them. Whenever they are looking at you and talking to you, it’s as if they are looking above your shoulder. Do you feel that way about Nadja?
I felt the same way about Petzold’s characters I play, that they live in a kind of their own world. That they look for their own truth. But for Nadja, when I was reading the script, she doesn’t have that interiority, even though you don’t really know. It’s the view from Leon’s perspective. The camera is a bit attached to him emotionally and it’s his point of view. That’s why you don’t really know who she is or what she’s up to.
Reading the script, I got that feeling as well. That’s why it’s fun to play. I think Christian gives characters their own worlds. For Nadja, I think he protected her world. She can have her own world and not get destroyed by others. She is present among people but she is not throwing everything at them. She knows who she is and she is self confident but she doesn’t have to show it.
I like that about Nadja. It’s like when Tomas tells her, "You didn’t tell me that you are not just an ice cream seller.” And she says, “You didn’t ask.” I’m not going to give you everything because you are the man. I like that about her.
Nadja always whistles a tune. I am dying to know what that tune is.
Oh I just made that up. It’s Nadja’s vibe I felt when we were shooting. OK, she is full of life and full of joy. She knows how to live. And that ended up in the movie. [Laughs.]
That’s awesome.
Is there a difference between how Nadja sees herself and how Leon sees her? The reason I am asking is that it turns out Leon, the writer, embellishes everyone, but Nadja, who is strong and confident, stays the same.
Yeah, there is always that surprising moment in Chrsitan’s films that you doubt yourself as how things are, then “Aha!” As you said, who is she? Is she just his view or is she really that person… I love these games that Christian plays.
It’s great.
I know you are busy with other projects. I hear you are doing STELLA (based on controversial figure Stella Goldshlag), and THIRTY THREE with Niels Arden Oplev. Is the latter project in English?
I believe so. There might be some parts in German.
Dustin Chang is a freelance writer. His musings and opnions on everything cinema and beyond can be found at www.dustinchang.com