Emotions run high for a group of friends in a holiday home by the Baltic Sea as the parched forest around them catches fire.  A forest fire gives the film its title, but what we are privy to is an intriguing thread, which takes a while to develop, about a struggling writer, Leon (Thomas Schubert), who is holed up at a remote German summer house and waiting for his publisher to visit and deliver what he expects is going to be bad news. When the publisher reads out appallingly written excerpts from the manuscript we can see how clever this is as a device as he doesn’t need to give him the verdict — the text literally speaks for itself.