Christian Petzold

The journey of two Vietnamese refugees in their quest to tell the world the story of the Vietnam War through the eyes of the survivors. In their beautiful yet explosive pilgrimage, they expose the deceptions and lies of the war.

A man attempting to escape occupied France falls in love with the wife of a dead author whose identity he has assumed. German troops are fast approaching Paris. Georg, a German refugee, escapes to Marseille in the nick of time. In his luggage, he carries the documents of an author, Weidel, who has taken his own life in fear of his persecutors. Those documents include a manuscript, letters and visa assurance from the Mexican embassy. Everything changes when Georg falls in love with the mysterious Marie. Is it devotion or calculation that has led her to share her life with a doctor, Richard, before journeying on in search of her husband? He's said to have surfaced in Marseille in possession of a Mexican visa for him and his wife. —AnonymusB As an illegal immigrant in Paris, Georg Seidler is constantly on the run from the police. By chance, he obtains the papers and a manuscript of the writer Weidel, who had previously committed suicide in his hotel room. Georg seizes the opportunity and smuggles himself onto a goods train to Marseille, together with his injured friend Heinz, who does not survive the journey. After arriving in the French harbor city, Georg delivers the sad news to Heinz's deaf wife, Melissa, and their son Driss, with whom he develops a close relationship. At the Mexican consulate, he hopes for a finder's fee for Weidel's documents, but is mistaken for the writer himself and thus obtains transit visas to Mexico for Weidel and his wife Marie. Georg meets the distraught wife several times, who knows nothing of her husband's suicide and continues to hope for his imminent arrival in Marseille. Unaware of Marie's identity, Georg falls in love with her and offers her one of the visas to Mexico. When Heinz's son Driss falls ill, Georg asks the German doctor Richard, who is having an affair with Marie, for help. Georg finds himself in a state of emotional chaos when he identifies Marie as Weidel's wife, who has not given up hope of seeing her husband again and does not want to leave Europe without him. Can Georg tell her the truth? How would she react, and would she even want to board the ship with him? —Arte Free adaptation of Anna Seghers' novel of the same name (1944) about the fate of refugees from the Nazi regime who hope for passage overseas by ship in Marseille before the Germans invade the city. Director Christian Petzold plays with the time periods in a subtle way by setting the adaptation in the 1940s in terms of dialogue and plot, but using contemporary costumes and locations. The story about a young German who assumes the identity of a dead writer in order to be able to use his transit visa and falls in love with his wife while waiting in Marseille thus develops a variety of references: To Seghers' text, to the work of Christian Petzold, whose motifs are reflected in the material, and to the current situation in Europe in times of the refugee crisis. In the occupied Paris, the refugee Paul offers a ride to Marseille to his friend Georg if he delivers some correspondence to the famous writer Franz Weidel at his hotel room. However, Geord finds that Weidel committed suicide in his bathroom and the hotel owner has discarded his body. Georg takes Weidel's documents and last manuscript with him to deliver to Paul at the bar, but the Germans have raided the place and arrested Paul. Georg flees to Marseille with his wounded friend, Heinz, hidden in a train wagon, but Heins dies during the journey. George befriends Heinz's son, the boy Driss, and gives the bad news to the widow, Melissa, who is deaf and dumb and is also illegal. Georg goes to the Mexican Consulate to deliver Weidel's documents and is mistakenly taken by Weidel. He resolves to pose as the writer and receives visas and money for him and his wife Marie to leave France. He goes to the American Consulate to get a transit visa and in both opportunities, he sees a beautiful woman looking at him. When the asthmatic Driss has a crisis, Georg searches a doctor and finds Dr. Richard, who is the lover of Marie, the mysterious woman that Georg has seen at the consulates. Soon he learns that she is Weidel's wife and is waiting for him to reunite in their trip to Mexico. But both Georg and Richard have fallen in love with her. —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

After surviving Auschwitz, a former cabaret singer has her disfigured face reconstructed and returns to her war-ravaged hometown to seek out her gentile husband, who may or may not have betrayed her to the Nazis. In the aftermath of WWII, Nelly, a Jewish survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp, horribly disfigured from a bullet wound in her face, undergoes a series of facial reconstruction surgeries and decides to find her husband Johnny who works at the Phoenix club in Berlin. Undoubtedly, Nelly is stunning, yet, her new self is beyond recognition, so Johnny, the man who may have betrayed her to the Nazis, will never imagine that the woman in front of him who bears an uncomfortable and unsettling resemblance to his late wife, is indeed her. Without delay, and with the intention to collect the deceased's inheritance, Nelly will go along with Johnny's plot and she will impersonate the dead woman, giving the performance of a lifetime before friends and relatives in a complex game of deceit, duplicity, and ultimately, seduction. In the end, during this masquerade, as the fragile and broken Nelly tries to find out whether Johnny betrayed her or not, she will have to dig deep into her wounded psyche and inevitably choose between revenge and forgiveness.

The dishonorably discharged Afghanistan veteran Thomas returns to his home village of Jerichow. Ali, a local Turkish-German businessman, owner of a snack-bar chain, hires him as a driver. That's when Thomas meets Laura, his Turkish boss's young and attractive wife. A classic love triangle is born, unfolding in desolate northeast Germany, where thick forests suddenly end on cliffs overlooking the Baltic Sea. Caught between guilt and freedom, between passion and reason, the protagonists have no hopes for fulfillment of their dreams. —Warsaw Film Festival