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Afire (Roter Himmel)
Friends Felix and Leon are driving to Felix's family holiday home on the Baltic Sea not far from Ahrenshoop when their car breaks down. After walking through the forest with their luggage, they arrive at the house to find it unexpectedly inhabited by Nadja, whose presence is obvious though they do not meet her. Her romantic trysts keep them up at night, causing Leon to resent her. Over the course of their vacation forest fires are mentioned, first distantly, then approaching.
Leon spends his time fussing over the manuscript of his second novel, while Felix is less hurried about completing his photography portfolio. Within a couple days, they have both met Nadja, who is kind and accommodating. Despite this, Leon continues to be frustrated by her. Meanwhile, Felix strikes up a friendship with her and her lover, Devid, a lifeguard at the nearby beach.
The emotions among the four intensify as Leon broods and resists interacting with the others. Felix and Devid develop a romantic and sexual relationship. Nadja offers friendship to Leon but he struggles to accept it. After much consternation, he decides to grant her request to read his manuscript, which she finds inferior and she tells him that he knows its poor quality. Leon does not take this well and isolates himself for the rest of the evening.
When Leon's publisher Helmut arrives so they can review the manuscript together, Leon grows even more despondent as Helmut connects more with Felix, Devid, and especially Nadja, who is revealed to be a doctoral candidate in literature, not the seasonal hotel employee Leon thought. After a dinner that is tense for Leon and enjoyable for the rest, the forest fires are close enough that ash begins to fall just as Devid and Felix finally leave to retrieve their abandoned car. Helmut suffers a medical emergency. Nadja is quick to act, driving Helmut's tiny rental car to the hospital. Leon follows on foot. On the way, he sees wild boar fleeing the fire. After he watches a boar die, the fire begins to crest the hill and he runs. In darkness, he reaches the hospital to join Nadja, asleep on a bench.
When they wake in the morning and find Helmut, he shares private moments with both of them. Nadja asks about his health, which he has lied about so as not to trouble them, and informs him of Leon's distress. Helmut comforts Leon, advising him to abandon his work-in-progress but assuring him of eventual success. Helmut promises to help him as long as his condition allows.
On the walk back to the house, Nadja offers Leon comfort which Leon angrily rejects, leading Nadja to castigate him for his self-centeredness before leaving him alone on the beach. Remorseful, he follows her back to the house where he begins to confess romantic feelings for her, just as she sees two police officers in the backyard. Nadja approaches them and they inform her that Devid and Felix were found burned to death by the fires.
Nadja and Leon go to see their bodies and see their charred corpses intertwined in death. Nadja has a profound emotional reaction, but Leon cannot absorb the reality, instead thinking about other coupled corpses throughout history, such as those found at Pompeii. She leaves without him, and by the time he reaches the vacation house she has left. He goes to the beach and sobs, looking at the bioluminescence in the sea, something he had refused to do earlier.
Some time later, Leon is in Helmut's hospital room as Helmut reads Leon's new manuscript back to him, a work of autofiction based on the time he shared with Felix, Nadja, and Devid. Together they look at photos Felix took that summer which Helmut wants to use as accompanying artwork for the novel. Helmut has Leon leave when a medic appears to administer a treatment. Waiting outside, Leon sees Nadja arriving, presumably to visit Helmut. He steps out from hiding and the two share a moment of mutual recognition.