Transit

Director: Christian Petzold
Cast: Franz Rogowski, Paula Beer, Lilian Batman, Mariam Zaree, Godehard Giese
Time: 101 min
Country: Germany, France
Year: 2018
Language: German with English subtitles

Transit lives up to its title with a challenging drama that captures characters – and puts the audience – in a state of flux and exerts an unsettling pull. Paris, nowadays, at the end of the summer. Georg, a young man fleeing the Germans, must bring papers and mail to a writer. He discovers that he committed suicide in his hotel room. Thanks to the papers, Georg can go to Marseille. He takes the identity of the dead man and waits for the ship that will take him far away. In Marseille, he meets Marie, a young woman in desperate search for a missing person. It is the wife of the writer. She was told that her husband was in the city. She is far from suspecting herself of being in search of a ghost. And this ghost is Georg. Who falls in love, who dreams of leaving Marseille with her. They get to know each other better. Everywhere in Marseilles, there are refugees, who, too, are like ghosts, who dream of being able to once again become human beings in Mexico City, in America or in Shanghai. But it’s now that Georg wants to become a human again, that he wants to love, breathe and caress. He does not want to lose Mary, he does not want to leave her in the realm of ghosts, disappeared and dead.