A trifecta of films — “Jerichow,” “Barbara,” and most recently, “Phoenix” — has turned German filmmaker Christian Petzold into an arthouse favorite. And the good news for fans is that his next movie is gearing up, and as always, it sounds promising.
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Petzold will direct an adaptation Anna Seghers‘s classic novel, “Transit.” Set at the cusp of WWII after Germany invades France, the story follows a man who escapes a Nazi concentration and flees to Marseilles, where he’s tasked with an assignment that will bring him an intimate understanding of the plight of refugees. Here’s the book synopsis:
Having escaped from a Nazi concentration camp in Germany in 1937, and later a camp in Rouen, the nameless twenty-seven-year-old German narrator of Seghers’s multilayered masterpiece ends up in the dusty seaport of Marseille. Along the way he is asked to deliver a letter to a man named Weidel in Paris and discovers Weidel has committed suicide, leaving behind a suitcase containing letters and the manuscript of a novel. As he makes his way to Marseille to find Weidel’s widow, the narrator assumes the identity of a refugee named Seidler, though the authorities think he is really Weidel. There in the giant waiting room of Marseille, the narrator converses with the refugees, listening to their stories over pizza and wine, while also gradually piecing together the story of Weidel, whose manuscript has shattered the narrator’s “deathly boredom,” bringing him to a deeper awareness of the transitory world the refugees inhabit as they wait and wait for that most precious of possessions: transit papers.
It sounds like the perfect fit for Petzold’s thoughtful filmmaking, and we’re eager to see what he does with the material. No word yet on casting or a start date, but I’d presume this will be something aiming for the 2018 festival circuit.