TRANSIT
A film by Christian Petzold
Starring: Franz Rogowski and Paula Beer
Opens in Toronto on Friday, November 9 at the TIFF Bell Lightbox
SYNOPSIS
After sold out screenings and a distinct buzz at TIFF, director Christian Petzold’s follow-up to ‘Phoenix’ opens at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on Friday, October 12. Boldly based on Anna Seghers’ 1944 novel of the same name Transit blurs time to create a puzzle piece of mistaken identities, a meditation on the spectre of facism and of refugees unstuck from history.
Franz Rogowski delivers a break out performance as Georg who flees to Marseille after the Nazi invasion. There he assumes the identity of a dead man whose identity and transit papers he possesses. Stuck there, he meets Marie (Paula Beer), a young woman desperate to find her missing husband...
DIRECTOR’S NOTE
The transit space that is described by Anna Seghers in her book is a horizontal space, it is a geographical space, the space between Europe and the United States. They are in the port city, and thus the space between the land where we are and the sea we want to travel over. So this is the horizontal transit space. But I think that there is also a vertical kind of transit space, and that is time, and the stories that develop over time. And so we not just find ourselves between the United States and Europe, or between land and water, but we also find ourselves trapped in yesterday's time and today... we, in today's world, haven't really made any progress as compared to the past. So it's not people from the past that are ghosts-it is we that are so much more ghost-like. – Christian Petzold
ABOUT DIRECTOR CHRISTIAN PETZOLD
Born in 1960 in Hilden. Completed German and theater studies at the Free University of Berlin and subsequently directing at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin between 1988 and 1994.
DIRECTOR'S FILMOGRAPHY:
Transit (2017)
Phoenix (2015)
Barbara (2012)
Dreileben - Etwas Besseres Als Den Tod (Something Better Than Death) (2010)
Jerichow (2008)
Yella (2007)
Ghosts (2005)
Wolfsburg (2003)
Something To Remind Me (2002)
The State I Am In (2001)
The Sex Thief (1998)
Cuba Libre (1996)
Pilots (1995)
FILMS WE LIKE
Founded by award-winning documentary filmmaker Ron Mann (Grass, Comic Book Confidential, Altman) Films We Like is a boutique distributor of documentary, independent and international films in Canada. Recent releases include Nico, 1988, Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood.
Running time: 101 minutes
Germany-France, in German and French with English and French subtitles
Media Contact: Virginia Kelly
V Kelly & Associates