Europe, Now! Alice Nellis, Christian Petzold

Christian Petzold (Hilden, Germany – 1960), born to East German emigrants and raised in the small town of Haan, moved to Berlin in 1981. There, from 1988 to 1994, he studied at the Deutsche Film – und Fernsehakademie Berlin (DFFB), the Academy of Film and Television. These years coincided with the Wende (turning point), the period of profound transformation following the Berlin Wall’s fall and German reunification. As a student, Petzold attempted to capture this momentous change in his early documentary shorts, which, though unsuccessful by his own admission, provided narrative material for his next two decades of work.

During his DFFB years, Petzold formed a crucial partnership with instructor Harun Farocki (1944-2014), whose influence as a filmmaker, artist, and intellectual helped shape Petzold’s approach to developing ideas and scripts. Transitioning from documentaries, Petzold graduated with Pilotinnen (Pilots, 1995), a TV feature loosely based on Hitchcock’s The 39 Club (1935). This unconventional thriller introduced a recurring theme in his early work: women struggling in post-reunification Germany. The film’s success of Pilotinnen led to Cuba libre (1996), which transplanted the noir classic Detour (1945) by Edgar G. Ulmer from the desolate roads of post-war America to the squalor of 1990s. His third television film, The Beischlafdiebin (The Sex Thief, 1998) is also based on a noir plot.

Petzold developed a distinctive style rich in literary and cinematic references. His films, grounded in reality yet steeped in history, reinvent genres while exploring connections between Germany’s turbulent past and uncertain present. His big screen debut, Die innere Sicherheit (The State I Am In, 2000), following former RAF terrorists and their teenage daughter, began his “Ghost Trilogy” and earned the German Critics’ Prize. This trilogy continued with Gespenster (Ghosts, 2005) and Yella (2007), both dealing directly with the trauma of post-unification Germany and establishing him as a leading figure of the “Berlin School.” The 2001 TV film Toter Mann (Something to Remind Me) marked the first of his many collaborations with the then-unknown actress Nina Hoss and also his first variation on Hitchcock’s Vertigo, whose plot he takes up with the story of a lawyer and a lonely blonde woman, and of an attraction that turns into obsession. Wolfsburg (2003), starring Nina Hoss, starring Hoss, won the FIPRESCI Prize at the Berlinale. Gespenster (Ghosts), the second chapter of the “Ghost Trilogy” portraying two young women living on the margins, earned Petzold his second German Critics’ Award. The third instalment, Yella (2007), inspired by Herk Harvey’s horror film Carnival of Souls (1962), won Hoss the Silver Bear for best performance. Their collaboration continued in Jerichow (2008); presented at the 65th Venice Film Festival, a reimagining of The Postman Always Rings Twice, where a veteran of the war in Afghanistan begins a relationship with a married woman

International recognition for both Petzold and Hoss peaked with Barbara (2012, Silver Bear for Best Direction). Set in the 1980 GDR, the film is a crossover between thriller and spy story, and kicks off a new trilogy, “Love in Times of Oppressive Systems”. A FIPRESCI award winner at San Sebastian, the second instalment Phoenix (2015) is a noir set in Germany after the end of World War II, where Nina Hoss is a concentration camp survivor forced to undergo facial reconstruction surgery. Her newfound husband does not recognize her but slowly tries to transform her into the wife he remembers. Again, the references to Vertigo are clear, but the atmosphere and the staging also show clear references to melodrama and Fassbinder.

The trilogy ends with Transit (2018), a free adaptation of the novel of the same name by Anna Seghers. It’s the story of a political refugee who, after fleeing from Paris during the Nazi occupation, begins a relationship with the widow of a writer dead by suicide of whom he assumes the identity. This time, the female leading role is entrusted to Paula Beer, who will also take part in Petzold’s later films.
In 2020, the “Trilogy of the Elements” opens with Undine, once again presented in competition at the Berlinale. The film is a reworking of the mythological figure of Ondina, an intense love story built on the symbolic meaning of water. In the second chapter, Roter Himmel (Afire, 2023), Grand Jury Prize in Berlin, a fiery sky accompanies the sentimental education of a group of young people in a large house in the middle of the woods near the sea, at the height of summer. The protagonist is a writer struggling with his second novel and forced to come to terms with himself, love and his own arrogance.

Christian Petzold is currently finishing his new film Miroirs No. 3 which will not be part of the “Elements Trilogy”, but will once again star Paula Beer in the role of a young pianist who loses her boyfriend in a tragic car accident.