Transit

Christian Petzold's Transit premiered in competition at the Berlinale in 2018 and remains the boldest formal gamble of his career. The source is Anna Seghers' novel, written in 1944 by a woman who had herself waited in Marseille for papers; Petzold keeps the text's period language and situations intact but shoots them in a Marseille of mobile phones, riot vans and contemporary clothes. Nothing in the film explains the discrepancy, and nothing needs to.

Franz Rogowski plays Georg, who reaches the city carrying the manuscript and documents of a writer who no longer needs them, and finds a consulate willing to treat him as that man. Paula Beer plays Marie, who is looking for someone in the same crowded streets. Hans Fromm's photography is bright and unhurried, the Mediterranean light doing the work that a period palette would usually do, and the film moves at the pace of people who have nothing to do but wait and everything to lose while waiting.

Critics treated it as a major work — 94% on Rotten Tomatoes across 183 reviews, and a fixture of the decade-end lists — largely because the anachronism turns out to be an argument rather than a gimmick. Petzold has said he wanted the audience to stop asking which year they were watching. It is the film that made Rogowski and Beer central to German cinema, and Beer would return for Undine and Afire.