Speaking with Christian Petzold last fall, the German auteur told us he was developing two films: one being a crime story for German TV, which would be his fourth installment of Polizeiruf 110, and another about “political-left witches who are killing capitalists.” He’s now got another project in the works, one that would mark the kind of team-up Marvel could only dream of: a drama starring Nina Hoss and Paula Beer.
“I’m thinking about making a movie with both of them,” Petzold told Letterboxd. “I’ve written down a little bit of a script. If I can finish writing after making this police drama, I think Nina and Paula would both like it. It’s about a theater group under pressure—they’ve lost their theater, because it has been sold to a malevolent person. This will be their last season. They’re performing a play by Chekhov, and they have an ensemble that’s not very strong. But at this moment, when they know the group has to die, they deliver their greatest performance ever. That would be the story, with Nina and Paula as part of the ensemble.”
Hoss had her international breakout starring in Petzold’s Something to Remind Me, Wolfsburg, Yella, Jerichow, Barbara, and Phoenix. Beer, who had her breakout with François Ozon’s Frantz, has led the last four features from Petzold: Transit, Undine, Afire, and Miroirs No. 3, the latter arriving in U.S. theaters today. Such a reunion would certainly be one of the acting triumphs of the decade, so hopefully this one moves forward.
Petzold also shared his views on Berlinale’s recent political controversy, staying silent when it came to the genocide in Gaza, telling Variety about his time on the 2024 jury, “We had many, many people onstage in the time when I was on the jury. We have people in from Gaza, and they were onstage and said they wanted to have a ceasefire. And the Germans had a big problem. [The Germans] are the killers; they made the Holocaust. And now they want to be the good guys. So, therefore, they say that antisemitism is the worst thing in the world. And it is. It’s the worst thing. Terrible. But there is a quotation by [philosopher Theodor] Adorno — he says that a philosemite is an antisemite who’s loving Jews. Now they want to be philosemites. “