Transit (2018)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | transit |
| Country of production | Germany , France |
| original language | German , French |
| Publishing year | 2018 |
| length | 101 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Christian Petzold |
| script | Christian Petzold |
| production | Florian Koerner von Gustorf , Michael Weber |
| music | Stefan Will |
| camera | Hans Fromm |
| cut | Bettina Boehler |
| occupation | |
| |
Transit is a German-French feature film by Christian Petzold from 2018 . The drama, with Franz Rogowski and Paula Beer in the lead roles, is based freely on the novel of the same name by Anna Seghers . Director Petzold, who also wrote the screenplay for the film, relocated the story to the present day about a German who fled the National Socialists to France during the Second World War . Petzold dedicated Transit to his friend, filmmaker Harun Farocki (1944–2014).
The film premiered on February 17, 2018 in the competition at the 68th Berlinale . The German theatrical release took place on April 5, 2018.
action
France, in the present: The political refugee Georg escapes his arrest in the German-occupied Paris . Instead, he accidentally comes into possession of the identification documents and a manuscript of the well-known writer Weidel, who committed suicide in his hotel room. Georg flees with his injured comrade Heinz by freight train to Marseille . On the way there, he reads the manuscript entitled The Escaped and identifies with the main character. While Heinz dies on the train ride, Georg reaches Marseille unscathed. He brings the news of Heinz's death to his deaf wife Melissa and son Driss, who like many others have illegally sought refuge in the port city. Georg befriends the boy and spends time with him.
When Georg wants to hand over the papers of the late writer, the Mexican consul mistakenly mistook him for Weidel. He does not clear up the mix-up and in this way comes into possession of two transit visas, which were intended for Weidel and his wife Marie. Marie once separated from her husband, but wants to reconcile with him in order to leave Europe together. She knows nothing of her husband's death and has been waiting for him in Marseille for weeks. Several times, Georg and Marie meet briefly in the city before they get to know each other. Since Marie is told that Georg has called in as Weidel at the Mexican consulate and later also at the US consulate for formalities, she believes that her husband is still alive and is also in Marseille.
When Driss suffers a severe asthma attack, Georg manages to call the German doctor Richard for help. This is also Marie's lover. As a result, Georg and Marie get closer and sleep together after Richard's supposed departure. He hides the truth from Marie, but offers her one of the transit visas. Marie, happy about Richard's departure, hopes that her husband will return in time and turns down the offer.
Events come thick and fast when Richard has to cede his ship passage to French soldiers and returns. At the same time Melissa and Driss flee the city and Georg is directly confronted with the suicide of a fugitive. Georg wants to reveal himself to Marie, but shortly before that she falls asleep on the bed. When Marie learns that Georg alias Weidel has booked a passage on the ship Montréal , she agrees to leave France with Georg on the same ship. On the taxi ride to the port, however, he pretends to have forgotten something and instead sells Richard his place on the ship. Georg plans to flee across the Pyrenees . He entrusts Weidel's manuscript to the owner of his local pub "Mont Ventoux" before he learns that the Montréal has run into a mine and that there are no survivors. While Marseille is being hit by the wave of purges, Georg stays in "Mont Ventoux" and hopes to see Marie again.
History of origin
Script adaptation
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Christian Petzold made his eighth feature film with Transit . For the script he was inspired by Anna Segher's autobiographical novel of the same name from 1944, but transferred the story to the present day in Marseille. “I'm tired of historical films, no real ones. I don't like adjusting the time. I think that when you tell the time and the past, you have to bring it to mind, ”says Petzold.
According to his own statements, Transit was the favorite book of him and his friend, filmmaker Harun Farocki . Both would have read it once a year: "[...] I think that this novel by Anna Seghers is actually our story: this being thrown into the world," says Petzold. At the same time, he saw a kind of “ghost story” in it: “For the exiles, time is stopped and no longer turns. Nobody cares about the past they have. They have no future, they only live in the now. And it doesn't take up the now, ”said Petzold. Together with Farocki, who died in 2014, a first version of the script was created, which was more based on the French Nouvelle Vague film Out of Breath (1960) by Jean-Luc Godard . Petzold was bothered by what he saw as the imprecise drawing of female figures in Segher's novel. He also felt that the situation of European exiles in the 1940s was comparable to that of the current refugee movement .
Cast and filming
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The German actors Franz Rogowski and Paula Beer , with whom Petzold worked for the first time, were engaged for the leading roles of Georg and Marie . He discovered Rogowski in the film Love Steaks (2013). Petzold came across Beer while helping his French colleague François Ozon with the German dialogues for the historical film Frantz (2016). In the run-up to the shooting, he had intensive discussions with both actors about finding characters. Beer found Petzold's approach to be the most open approach to a character in her acting career to date.
The filming of Transit took place from May 9th to July 8th 2017 at the original locations in Marseille. In his film, Petzold understood the port city as a “door” to the world, but also as a “prison” for the refugees. Before filming, he rehearsed each scene extensively for up to two hours with the actors, which meant he was faster and sometimes only had to turn off shots once or twice. For the shooting, Petzold relied on a tried and tested work collective, which he used to call a “partisan group”. Such was Transit , the thirteenth collaboration with cinematographer Hans Fromm , the twelfth with film composer Stefan Will , the eleventh with Bettina Böhler (cut) and the tenth with the producers Florian Koerner von Gustorf and Michael Weber . During the filming, the film team met three to four times a week to watch films together in the evening and to discuss the cinema.
ZDF , Arte and the French neon productions were involved as co-producers on the film . Petzold's directorial work was funded by the Filmförderungsanstalt (340,000 euros), the BKM (250,000 euros), the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg (350,000 euros), the Franco-German Funding Commission (300,000 euros) and Eurimages (480,000 euros).
reception
Transit received 2.3 out of four possible stars in the international reviews of the British trade magazine Screen International and, together with the Mexican contribution Museo , took 9th place among all 19 Berlinale competition films. Wes Anderson's animated film Isle of Dogs - Atari's Journey (3.3) topped the ranking.
The femundo portal praised the film as “a stunning literary film adaptation that succeeds in telling historical material timelessly”.
Awards
Christian Petzold competed with Transit for the fourth time after 2005 , 2007 and 2012 for the Golden Bear , the main prize of the festival. The film did not receive an award , but Petzold received the Julius Campe Prize 2018 with reference to the film .
The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating particularly valuable.
Web links
- Transit at berlinale.de
- Transit at crew united
- Transit at filmportal.de
- Transit in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Pictures from the film set at revolver-film.com, June 8, 2017
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for transit . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 176931 / K).
- ^ Petzold filmed Anna Seghers novel . In: zdf.de, July 3, 2017 (video, 1:07 min ff.).
- ↑ a b c d Treml, Cordula: "Transit": Lost in the presence ... . In: goethe.de, July 2017 (accessed on January 14, 2018).
- ↑ a b Transit at crew united (accessed January 15, 2018).
- ^ Petzold filmed Anna Seghers novel . In: zdf.de, July 3, 2017 (video, 0:35 min ff.).
- ^ ZDF filmed Anna Seghers' novel "Transit" . In: presseportal.de, May 24, 2017 (accessed January 15, 2018).
- ^ Dalton, Ben: 'Isle Of Dogs' tops Screen's final Berlin Jury Grid; Golden Bear winner 'Touch Me Not' scores low . In: screendaily.com, February 26, 2018 (accessed March 8, 2018).
- ↑ Fiction and reality overlap. femundo.de, April 26, 2018, accessed on May 12, 2018 .