Christian Petzold

Miroirs No. 3 (2025)

After a car crash kills her boyfriend, piano student Laura is taken in by Betty, who witnessed the accident. Living with Betty's family brings comfort, but Laura starts questioning their intentions as time passes. ...

Afire (2023)

Self-important author Leon joins his best friend on a summer holiday near the Baltic Sea to complete his novel. When they arrive, they find their house is already occupied by a carefree woman who challenges Leon to open up. Meanwhile, forest wildfires rage ...

Undine (2020)

Undine is a historian and tour guide at the Berlin City Museum specializing in urban development, while Christoph is an industrial diver. Linked by a love of the water, the two form an intense bond, which can only do so much to help Undine overcome the con ...

Transit (2018)

In an attempt to flee Nazi-occupied France, Georg assumes the identity of a dead author but soon finds himself stuck in Marseilles, where he falls in love with Maria, a young woman searching for her missing husband. ...

Where Do You Stand Today, Christian Petzold? (2017)

"Où en êtes-vous ?" (Where do you stand today?) is a project initiated by the Centre Pompidou, which commissions its guest filmmakers to make a free-form film in response to a question simultaneously retrospective, introspective and focused on their futu ...

Phoenix (2014)

In the aftermath of WWII, German-Jewish cabaret singer Nelly has to undergo facial reconstructive surgery following her survival from Auschwitz. Without recognising Nelly, her former husband Johnny asks her to help him claim his wife's inheritance. To see ...

Barbara (2012)

In 1980s East Germany, Berlin doctor Barbara is banished to a country medical clinic for applying for an exit visa. Deeply unhappy with her reassignment and fearful of her co-workers as possible Stasi informants, Barbara stays aloof, especially from the go ...

Dreileben: Beats Being Dead (2011)

Johannes is a loner who wants a better job. And then he meets Ana. Ana is attractive and even though her job is even less prestigious than Johannes's, he falls for her. And then she quits her job to be with him (and be dependent on him) and suddenly things ...

Jerichow (2009)

In a small Northern German town, a dishonourably discharged Afghanistan veteran is offered a job as a deliveryman by an alcoholic Turkish entrepreneur, through which the former meets the latter's gorgeous wife. ...

Yella (2007)

A young East German woman leaves her controlling husband/business partner and relocates to a West German city to start anew as an accountant, but he soon catches up with her. ...

Ghosts (2005)

Nina, a mentally ill teenage orphan, starts a new job as a garden cleaner when she meets Toni. They fall in love but soon Toni starts betraying Nina. Meanwhile, Francoise is picked up at a Berlin psychiatric hospital by her husband, Pierre. After spotting ...

Wolfsburg (2003)

Philipp Gerber is a smart, but self-satisfied car salesman. In an inattentive moment at the wheel of his car, he runs over a boy on a bike and, instead of helping him, he drives away. As he has feelings of guilt, he tries to find out more about the accide ...

Something to Remind Me (2002)

Middle-aged lawyer Thomas meets Leyla at the pool. After their paths keep crossing, he asks her out on a date. Somewhat to his surprise she agrees. The next morning Thomas awakes to find Leyla and his laptop, which contains vital case files, missing. ...

The State I Am In (2001)

Clara and Hans are left-wing terrorists who have been sought by police for almost fifteen years. Their increasingly rebellious daughter Jeanne begins to pose a threat to their security when she falls in love with a boy she meets on the beach. ...

The Sex Thief (1998)

Petra professionally works as a thief abroad to finance the studies of her younger sister Franziska in Germany. ...

Cuba Libre (1996)

Tom steals Tina's love and money, and five years later they meet again by chance. Both wanting to get back what was taken from them, they dream of traveling to Cuba. In the end, however, they only manage to get as far as the Belgian coast. ...

Pilots (1995)

Drifters tells of Karin, a past-her-prime cosmetics saleswoman, with her increasing exasperation with her life and her dreams of leaving it all behind and living in Paris. An unlikely but entertaining plot develops, where anything can happen. ...

Imaginary Architecture, the architect Hans Scharoun (1995)

Hans Scharoun has built houses which show not only structural substance and aesthetic forms but also how human beings should live in buildings. This depiction can only be imaginary - like reading invisible writing on walls. Bitomsky's film looks at several ...

Vergangen, vergessen, vorüber (1994)

Bruno S., musician and actor in several films by Werner Herzog (Kaspar Hauser, Stroszek), leads us round along the former front lines in Berlin. A film about the division of a city. ...

Deduction (1994)

Die UFA (1992)

Die UFA, a film essay about the eponymous German studio. ...

The Warm Money (1992)

Vera and Heike are two friends who aspire for a dazzling lifestyle, but don't own any savings to do so. Vera decides to start stealing from men while sipping drinks with them in bars. When Heike takes over her job, her technique doesn't prove as successful ...

Eastward (1991)

Shortly after German reunification, three residents of a quiet area north of Berlin talk about their plans and attempts at new economic beginnings amid the changes brought by the fall of the Berlin Wall. ...

The Cinema and the Wind and Photography (1991)

How should one define the relationship of documentary film to reality? Does it aim at authenticity or is it rather an "exile of reality", a "foreign homeland of reality", where the pre-filmic, stripped of its immediacy, comes to its own right in the first ...

Am Rand (1991)

Documentary about empty space in Berlin ...

South (1990)

A lonesome car. The wind is whistling. A door of an undefined building opens—is it a holiday bungalow, a shed or a ruin? A woman is standing at the window. The heat of an idle day of holiday, perhaps. The South, a place of longing. ...

19 Portraits (1990)

Portraits of students of Berlin Film School. ...

Glory and Misery of the Gifted (1990)

Broads (1989)

The social democrats of the sixties and seventies worked on their grand plan to build a highway network in Germany that every German citizen could reach within five minutes of their home. The little film hangs around between and on the streets of this netw ...

I'm Working Through Everything... Word of Honor! (1988)

Short film made by a group of young directors in Berlin. ...

Mission (1987)

Peter Lorre : Derrière le masque du maudit (2024)

He is the despicable child killer in Fritz Lang's M. Drawing on testimonies and archives, this portrait sheds light on Peter Lorre's turbulent career and complex personality, unable to escape the monster that made him famous. ...

The Cinematograph: Birth of an Art (2021)

Throughout the 19th century, imaginative and visionary artists and inventors brought about the advent of a new look, absolutely modern and truly cinematographic, long before the revolutionary invention of the Lumière brothers and the arrival of December 2 ...

Where Do You Stand Today, Christian Petzold? (2017)

"Où en êtes-vous ?" (Where do you stand today?) is a project initiated by the Centre Pompidou, which commissions its guest filmmakers to make a free-form film in response to a question simultaneously retrospective, introspective and focused on their futu ...

Love/Work/Cinema: A Conversation with Christian Petzold and Nina Hoss (2016)

New conversation between director Christian Petzold and actor Nina Hoss ...

Was heißt hier Ende? Der Filmkritiker Michael Althen (2015)

Documentary about German film critic Michael Althen. ...

The Making of 'Phoenix' (2014)

2014 documentary featuring interviews with Petzold, Hoss, actors Nina Kunzendorf and Ronald Zehrfeld, and production designer K. D. ...

Auge in Auge - Eine deutsche Filmgeschichte (2008)

This is not merely another film about cinema history; it is a film about the love of cinema, a journey of discovery through over a century of German film history. Ten people working in film today remember their favourite films of yesteryear. ...

Who is Helene Schwarz? (2005)

Only the chosen few know this woman who started working as a secretary for the German Film and Television Academy (DFFB) on 13 February, 1966. The path of Helen's career is paved with famous names – including that of Wolfgang Petersen, Holger Meins (who ...

Navy Cut (1993)

The revolution is as good as over, but the captain wants to send his crew into one last battle. Before this can happen, however, he is murdered. The crew is finally free. Meanwhile, the revolutionary Snow White has hidden on the ship, but she is discovered ...

Der Beigeschmack des Todes (1992)

Barrage and Bunker (1991)

Barrage and Bunker is an essay film about the (narrative) space imagined by fiction films. Reflections and associations about movement in space are the basis of every kind of story-telling. The film is sometimes referred to as part of Bitomsky's Cinema Tri ...

19 Portraits (1990)

Portraits of students of Berlin Film School. ...

Isaak Babel - Die Reiterarmee (1990)