Christian Petzold
When people lose something, their job, their identity, when their relationships fall apart, when they fall out of their lives, they begin to become ghosts, Christian Petzold once said in a film discussion. And that we see these ghosts in the cinema, who want to become human beings again.
Petzold’s own films are also populated by ghosts and shadow beings searching for ways to find their way back to life. They want to set out on new identities, experiencing love, loneliness, connection, longing, disappointment, and thus finding redemption – but unfortunately not always. The film weekend is dedicating a small retrospective to Petzold’s cinematic shadow beings, entitled “Vom Aufbruch in ein neues Leben” (Starting a new life).
Die innere Sicherheit (Germany, 2000)
Gespenster (Germany, 2005)
Barbara (Germany, 2012)
Transit (Germany, 2018)
Christian Petzold was born in Hilden in 1960, studied at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin, has received numerous prizes and awards, and is currently considered one of the most important German directors. His films are always minimalist, yet they possess a great inner tension: when they tell stories about the past, they are always about the present. Even though they are mostly guided by metaphors and motifs, they show everyday life in a realistic way. Although they open up hidden, complex worlds, they do so by making do with the bare essentials. Petzold loves the genre, but his characters never freeze into pure form; instead, they are always about big emotions. Petzold is considered an intellectual and eloquent – we look forward to talking to him about his work after the screenings.