Barbara

Germany

2012

105 Min

Color

1.85:1

German

Currently 3.7/5 Stars.
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PROD Florian Koerner von Gustorf

CAST Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Rainer Bock, Christina Hecke, Claudia Geisler, Peter Weiss, Carolin Haupt, Deniz Petzold, Jasna Fritzi Bauer, Mark Waschke, Peter Benedict, Susanne Bormann, Jannik Schümann, Alicia von Rittberg, Selin Barbara Petzold, Christoph Krix, Kirsten Block, Irene Rindje

SOUND Dominik Schleier, Andreas Mücke-Niesytka

Berlinale (Competition): Best Director, Istanbul (From the World of Festivals), BAFICI (Trayectorias), Karlovy Vary (Horizons), Toronto (Contemporary World Cinema), Telluride (Show), New York, AFI FEST (World Cinema)

Synopsis

Summer in the GDR in 1980. Barbara, a doctor, has submitted an application to emigrate to the West. She is punished by being posted away from the capital to a hospital in a small town. Jörg, her lover in the West, is busy planning her escape via the Baltic Sea. It’s a waiting game for Barbara. Her new flat, the neighbours, summer and the countryside no longer hold any charms for her. Although she is attentive to her young patients in the department for pediatric surgery under her new boss, André, she is deliberately cool to her colleagues. Her life, she thinks, will begin later.

André confuses her. First there’s his unshakable faith in her professional abilities, then there’s way he cares, and his winning smile. What makes him cover up for her when she helps Stella, a young runaway? Is he spying on her? Is he in love? Barbara begins to lose her grip on herself, her plans and her heart. The day of her planned escape approaches. After Gespenster (2005) and Yella (2007) this marks Christian Petzold’s third outing in the Berlinale’s Competition programme. His new work once again centres on a woman who seems to drift through life like a phantom. Hers is a life in which the fear of surveillance seems to be firmly embedded in all interpersonal relationships. –Berlinale

Director

Christian Petzold

Christian Petzold was born September 14, 1960, in Hilden, as the oldest of three sons. He grew up in Haan, where he went to school and finished his high school degree in 1979. After finishing civil service, Christian Petzold went to Berlin in 1981 and started to study German studies and dramatics at Freie Universität Berlin. After his graduation in 1989, Petzold continued to study at Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (dffb). During his studies, Christian Petzold worked as an assistant director for Hartmut Bitomsky and Harun Farocki – who contributed to all of Petzold’s later feature films – and worked as a film critic for several newspapers and magazines.

After several short films, including Süden and Das warme Geld, Petzold finished his graduation film for dffb, Pilotinnen, in 1994. The film production company Schramm Film Koerner & Weber participated in the production of Pilotinnen and Petzold continued to collaborate with the… read more