The fact that forest fires have long been part of German reality has been seen in various places in recent summers. Director Christian Petzold is now playing his new film during such a scenario. “Red Sky” tells the story of four young people who meet in a holiday home and are threatened by the flames.
Friends Leon (Thomas Schubert) and Felix (Langston Uibel) are driving to the coast. Leon wants to finish his second book there. But when the two arrive on foot at the holiday home after a car breakdown, they realize that they are not alone.
Nadja (Paula Beer), a distant friend of Felix’s mother, also spends her summer there. At first, only the chaos in the house points to Nadja’s existence, such as the food that has been cooked. At night, the two men hear sex noises coming from their room.
Social fever dream
In Petzold’s films, things sometimes seem a little out of place, as if they had fallen out of reality. Scenes drift off into the dreamlike. It’s the same in “Red Sky”. The music that comes from the turntable, for example, doesn’t sound like a turntable at all. And it takes some time before the four protagonists – including the lifeguard Devid (Enno Trebs) – actually meet.
In their conversations, the group then negotiates social issues such as work and status. It’s about the question of what is actually recognized as work nowadays and how much one defines oneself by it. “Roter Himmel” is a little more political than Petzold’s previous film “Undine”, in which Paula Beer also played the female lead.
During his Covid illness, he lay in bed for weeks and had fever dreams, Petzold said at the Berlinale. The dreams would have happened in the summer, in clearings. Then there were the forest fires in Turkey. “Red Sky” is also an exploration of the idea of a long summer like in France, where young people are given time to find themselves.
Parallels to Petzold’s life
The new film looks at different male characters. If you watch Leon in a bad mood as he dumps honey pops into his cereal bowl and persistently refuses any pleasure in order to continue working on his book, it becomes clear that the film is also an examination of being an artist. When Leon’s editor (Matthias Brandt) comes to visit, the situation escalates because Leon’s book is anything but good.
The book is entitled “Club Sandwich”. With Petzold it was the film “Cuba Libre”, in which he played more of a role as director, as he described at the Berlinale. “I wanted to show everyone what I’m capable of. What I’ve already seen in my life.” After three days he realized that this was the most horrible thing he had experienced up to that point. That also happens to Leon, who is building a stage.
Award-winning film in the dream realm
“Red Sky” is a film that is not easy to grasp, in which some things remain open and much is hidden. Some find a central love story not very believable, but you can overlook that if you get involved on other levels. Then the film unfolds atmosphere and depth. “Red Sky” won the Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival.
When you hear about the film’s scenario – forest fires, threat – you can think of climate change. And it will be exciting to see how the topic will be processed in literature and films in the years to come. In Petzold’s film, the fires take place more than they are discussed. According to his own statements, the 62-year-old doesn’t like “themed films” – that is, films that explicitly address a topic and try to paint it with action.
“Films take place in dream areas,” said Petzold of the German Press Agency. “We are somnambulistic in the cinema. We are physically present and absent at the same time. We have to film the dreams and the nightmares and not the themes,” he said in Berlin. “I also don’t go to bed with a topic and say to myself: ‘I’ll dream a topic now.’ I don’t go to the cinema like that either.”
