Matthias Brandt - Jeremy C. Processing

Director – Christian Petzold – 2025 – Germany – Cert. 15 – 86m

**1/2

A traumatised woman who survives a car crash moves in with a woman living near the crash site, unaware that the second woman is not what she seems – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 17th

She stares out from a bridge, watches the water go by from underneath it. Returning home, she’s lost her bag. Her partner wants to know where she’s been. Anyway, Debbi (Victoire Laly) and Roger (Marcel Heupermann) are waiting. The four go off in the car. While her partner and Roger swap notes on the song playing on the car sound system, Laura (Paula Beer from Afire, Christian Petzold, 2023; Transit, Christian Petzold, 2019; Never Look Away, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2018, Frantz, François Ozon, 2016) is distracted, noticing a woman standing in her driveway as they pass. When they stop to check their itinerary, Laura just stands there. She wants to go home, telling partner Jakob (Philip Froissant) she isn’t feeling well.

Driving Laura to the station in the other couple’s car, so she can go home while the other three carry on as planned, Jakob nearly collides with the woman on the drive.… Read the rest

Afire
(Roter Himmel)

Director – Christian Petzold – 2022 – Germany – Cert. 12a – 102m

*****

Two male friends’ plans to stay in his mother’s woodland house are disrupted by first a car breakdown, then a female guest of his mother’s, and finally forest fires – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 25th

Summer. Leon (Thomas Schubert from Breathing, Karl Markovics, 2011) and Felix (Langston Uibel) are driving to the latter’s mother’s holiday home on the Baltic coast when their car breaks down. Felix knows a short cut so they go through the woods,. When they reach the cottage, after getting lost, a guest is already there, a young woman Nadja (Paula Beer from Transit, Christian Petzold, 2018; Frantz, François Ozon, 2016), the daughter of a friend of Felix’s mother. At least, her belongings – underwear strewn around the big bedroom, cereal in the kitchen – are there.

Felix phones his mother to learn there’s a double booking. Not to worry – the pair can stay in the small bedroom. Except, Leon can’t sleep at night because of the sound of Nadja enjoying sex with someone through the paper-thin walls.

He doesn’t know how to confront her about this.… Read the rest