The Brooklyn Rail

Last October, I attended the New York Film Festival (NYFF) premiere of Miroirs No. 3, the latest film by German director Christian Petzold, a central figure of the Berlin School film movement and two-time Berlinale Silver Bear winner. The film follows young pianist Laura (Paula Beer), who, after surviving a car accident during her countryside getaway, is taken in by a local family of three: estranged couple Betty (Barbara Auer) and Richard (Matthias Brandt) and their twenty-something son Max (Enno Trebs). Gradually, she finds herself becoming enmeshed in the family’s attempts to rebuild their lives after a devastating tragedy.

It structurally echoes its immediate predecessor Afire (2023): four characters gather in a domestic house that acts as a psychological container. But where Afire is cutting and fatalistic, Miroirs No. 3 is restorative and hopeful. It starts as a delicate story and expands into a profound one. It’s Petzold’s most empathetic and reconciliatory film to date, intimate in scale but grand in emotional reach.

In December, I met with Petzold over Zoom while he was home in Berlin, writing his next film. We immediately bonded over a common ground: English isn’t our first language. Surprisingly, we would find ourselves fixating on linguistics again and again throughout the conversation—whether it be to define Laura’s role in Miroirs No. 3, or to identify the main theme of Marty Supreme. Trying to meet each other in English, we made room for pauses, revisions, and mutual understanding. Our attention to words began to feel less like analysis and more like care—for the film, for cinema, and for ourselves.

And when Petzold opened up about his own family and upbringing, I began to understand his recent breakaway from his signature exploration of Germany’s political history—and how healing itself feels like the most meaningful political gesture nowadays.

Weiting Liu (Rail): I’ve been in China spending time with my family for the holidays. Where are you right now?

Christian Petzold: Berlin. Between December and March, it’s an ugly, dark city. Some of my friends escape to other, warm places. But I’m writing the script of my next film at home to fight against this winter depression. By the way, I haven’t spoken English since I was at the New York Film Festival in October.

Rail: English isn’t my first language either. But I always tell myself: “It’s about the ideas you have that others don’t. It’s not about how accurately you can pronounce certain words like so many others can.”

Miroirs No. 3 ended up becoming my favorite out of NYFF this year. I personally prefer smaller-scale films that are, however, perfectly executed like this one. Paula Beer remains mesmerizing throughout. Her expressions, albeit subtle, manage to grip me. As the anchor of the story, her character Laura works so well with the other three roles who are all fascinating in their own ways. Do you want to start with sharing your experiences of working with her?

Petzold: All of us have known each other for years. In Germany, we don’t have a concrete film industry, so we have to build our own little partisan film groups. For example, Rainer Werner Fassbinder also had his own ensemble of regular collaborators throughout his career. In my opinion, Germany has the best theater scene in the world, partly because our bourgeoisie needs theater where they can express themselves. We have many good acting schools, but more for theater than cinema. In German cinema, we see so much theater acting; everything has to be theatrical.

Nine years ago, I saw Paula for the first time in French director François Ozon’s Frantz (2016). I was instantly impressed. François, a friend of mine, vouched for her special acting sensibility—she’s not playing, nor is she on stage. As of now, we have made four films together, and she remains independent. Whenever we film together, she maintains a state as if she were out of focus. In between shoots, she never tries to impress me. Instead, she goes back to her trailer, plays her piano, reads, etc. She is always herself. And I like that.

Rail: Beer’s agency shines through Laura who has a toughness, a resistance, and sometimes, an anger. At first, Laura doesn’t even know what she wants. She just knows she likes the strange comfort Betty brings her, which is enough for her to want to see where it can go. She goes with the flow until it no longer serves her—and then she leaves. I love this about Laura.

Petzold: From the very beginning, you can sense that Laura is a young woman drifting away. When I was in New York, one of the critics told me Betty and Laura have a “war friendship,” which is a brilliant and accurate definition.

When I went to school in the 1960s and ’70s, some of my teachers had just one leg or one arm—they were veterans who lost their limbs in World War II. Many of them ended up marrying the nurses who took care of them at the hospital. Having been on the verge of death, you would understandably want to marry your savior.

Laura has just survived a car accident that killed her boyfriend. Then Betty comes around, offering her a cozy place to sleep and shower in, making her breakfast, and whispering in her ears. Betty, to Laura, is like these nurses to the disabled veterans—or like a mother to her child who needs caring.

Rail: It’s amazing how we can rightfully derive these Freudian analogies from just a family of three and a girl from the outside, spending some idyllic time together in the countryside. The film’s profound in a way that you can sense there’s something larger at play. Do you think there’s anything going on in the larger society that makes these characters act this way?

Petzold: German nuclear families live in their own bubbles. They rarely want to share anything with the outside world. But Betty’s family is special: they have a porch facing the street, signaling they are open. And their openness is bravely anti-German. But when Betty and Richard’s daughter died, their special family project was destroyed. Their porch becomes empty. But Laura comes into their life and inspires them to be brave and open again.

When they sit with Laura on the porch, their neighbors gather around like vultures and stare at them like a nightmare out of a David Lynch film. These neighbors probably spread rumors about this special family who wants to live a freer life. They hate them because they can’t be them. German audiences would instantly recognize these bad neighbors.

Rail: Isn’t it implied that Laura is a doppelganger of Betty’s dead daughter? Betty is actively seeking a substitute in Laura who didn’t know the truth at first.

Petzold: She’s not a doppelganger. But you’re right to use the word “substitute,” which has a German counterpart. We don’t use the word “doppelganger.”

Rail: Now that I think about it, we don’t have a Chinese counterpart for “doppelganger.” We do, indeed, also say “substitute.”

Petzold: In this film, I want to portray a group of people who try to repair themselves on the basis of lies. But something good can come out of these lies. During their week together, Laura learned how to paint a fence and about herbs and cooking. And then she received her first bicycle from Max. She’s reborn and reliving the first days of her life. In the end, Laura isn’t angry about the truth. She’s angry that the illusion is gone. This is still a happy ending because all four of them learned how to live with their scars. Their biographies of trauma are rewritten. And Laura is out of the drift. In the last scene, she’s back in her apartment on her own, ready for her new chapter as a true adult.

Rail: You write these characters with deep empathy. You used to make more overtly political films. But your stories have become smaller and smaller in recent years. Why such a shift?

Petzold: For a while after World War II, it felt as though Germany was no longer part of human society. When I was growing up, my parents never talked about the fascist period. They focused on contributing to rebuilding a human society—earning money, buying a house, and sending their kids to school. But when I was twelve, my father lost his job and stayed unemployed for the next three years. During that time, he became a ghost in our family. I want some of my films to be about people sitting in cars alone with no job and no identity. My earliest films are ghost stories. In some sense, Miroirs No. 3 is also a ghost story.

Rail: What you just said reminds me of Afire which is about a man also becoming a ghost because he no longer knows what to do with his job as a writer. The men in this film, Richard and Max, work hard though. They work to escape something they don’t want to face.

Petzold: Before Afire, I also made Phoenix (2014) about the Holocaust and Transit (2018) about the refugees in Europe in the 1940s. Something shifted in me during COVID when I became obsessed with American Westerns. Watching them, I experienced America’s history of crime and violence. The men killed the Native Americans and then they killed each other—blood on everybody everywhere.

The men in Miroirs No. 3 repair cars. Nowadays people seem to not want to repair anything. In order to repair, you need to understand how things work and you need to cherish things. On the contrary, capitalism creates a vicious cycle of overproduction and reckless abandon. The film doesn’t have overt political subjects, nor do Westerns. But they’re all political.

Rail: Is cinema a form of redemption?

Petzold: I grew up very religious, so “redemption” is a touchy word. But I think cinema is about redemption. Funny you used this word. I saw Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme yesterday with my wife. I loved it. On our way home, my wife said, “This is a film about redemption.” The last scene, when Marty’s crying at the baby on the other side of the window, is cinema.