Christian Petzold's 11th feature, Mirrors No. 3, becomes his first to grace the Croisette
by Olivia Popp
- The Silver Bear-winning German filmmaker brings the work to this year’s Directors' Fortnight in his fourth collaboration with Paula Beer
Christian Petzold reunites with Paula Beer for the fourth time in his newest outing, Mirrors No. 3, which marks his first gambit at the Cannes Film Festival. The German director’s latest film, which is his 11th feature, will world-premiere in the Directors' Fortnight of this year's festival (13-24 May). At the Berlinale, where his movies often find a berth, Petzold collected the Silver Bear for Best Director for his 2012 effort Barbara [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Christian Petzold
film profile] and the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize two years ago for his last film, Afire [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Christian Petzold
film profile].
Production on Mirrors No. 3 began on 26 August 2024 in the region known as the Uckermark, located in northeastern Germany on the border with Poland. Beer stars, while Barbara Auer (Yella [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), Matthias Brandt (Transit [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Christian Petzold
interview: Franz Rogowski
film profile]) and Enno Trebs (Afire) play supporting roles, all of whom have previously also worked with the award-winning director. During the programme announcement, Directors' Fortnight General Delegate Julien Rejl stated that the film is “a kind of melodrama, very mysterious, but with the same great direction, precision and elegance that give Christian Petzold’s cinema its charm.”
The synopsis for the film reads as follows: “Beer plays an aspiring pianist, Laura, whose life is upended when she is in a car crash with her boyfriend, who is killed. Laura wanders into the house and life of a family of strangers, who offer to take care of her, but their motivations turn out not to be as simple as they first appear.” The title of the movie shares its name with a piano piece by famed French Impressionist composer Maurice Ravel.
Mirrors No. 3 was produced by Petzold's own outfit, Schramm Film Koerner Weber Kaiser, in co-production with ZDF and Arte, and it was supported by the German Federal Film Board (FFA), the Cultural Film Fund of the BKM, the German Film Fund (DFFF) and Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg. The Match Factory is handling its international sales.
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