Update: Metrograph Pictures has acquired the film for North American distribution, with a cast also including Barbara Auer, Matthias Brandt, and Enno Trebs. Production begins this week in Germany.
On a streak like few other directors working today, Christian Petzold’s mesmerizing, humorous Rohmer-esque drama Afire was the finest film of last year. The German director is now swiftly beginning his next project, set to kick off production this spring.
Miroirs No. 3 will mark Petzold’s fourth collaboration with Paula Beer following Transit, Undine, and Afire. Beer will play “a young music student who has to restructure her life when her boyfriend dies in a car crash in the countryside,” Screen Daily notes in an update that it’s received funding from Germany’s Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, while also receiving backing from the state ministry for culture and media (BKM) and script funding from the German Federal Film Board (FFA).
The feature’s produced by Petzold’s production company Schramm Film Koerner Weber Kaiser. We also dug up an expanded, translated synopsis: “The young piano student Emily from Berlin is involved in a car accident in which her boyfriend is killed. Miraculously, Emily survives the accident unharmed and is taken in by a strange family. She spends some time with them and finds comfort and support in order to get her life back on track. But over time she notices that something is wrong with the family. Emily begins to question who these people really are and what dark secrets they are hiding.”
However, don’t expect it to be part of a loose trilogy (or tetralogy) that began with water (Undine) and fire (Afire) and could expand to earth and sky. “I love the film series of the ’40s and the ’50s. I love John Ford movies, with his stock company. I want to be part of a city and not to be in a lonely museum on the outskirts of town. And so I said Undine (2020) is the first movie of a trilogy. I must say, it’s a little bit of a lie,” Petzold told Cinema Scope. “I have no idea for the third part of this trilogy.”
Might the below tracks be used in the score? I’d imagine we’d find out at a likely Berlinale 2025 premiere.