A man arrives in purgatory, eager to learn his eternal fate. The divine judgement, however, is slow to arrive. The minutes turn to hours, the hours turn to days, and the days begin to blur together in a place where time has no meaning. Eventually, after what feels to him like a hundred years, the man begs for a verdict. “What are you talking about?” comes the reply. “You’ve been in hell since you got here.”

That grim parable is told to Georg (“Happy End” breakout Franz Rogowski) roughly halfway into Christian Petzold’s “Transit,” and yet the poor bastard doesn’t seem to realize that it’s about him. The inscrutable hero of an inscrutable film that unfolds like a remake of…

This is absolutely fantastic and I would be stunned if it didn't end up being one of the highlights of the year. Not a film I think a person could throughly write on based on one viewing, but the structural motif of using dialogue stripped from the original setting of the 1940s and placing it in the present day is simple and ingenious. If it takes time (or a second viewing) to write cohesively on this it's likely because of how well this conceit plays out - making the slightly more melodramatic/romantic turn even more difficult to articulate - though it's no less affecting. Still, I wonder how this film would play without having at least an awareness of the…

Sydney Film Festival 2018 - #7

Two men meet in a Parisian cafe and talk at the bar about visas and transit passes and getting the fuck out of dodge. Sirens punctuate their conversation as emergency vehicles are seen rocketing back and forth through the window panes behind them. There is talk of occupying forces and cleansing sweeps, bringing to mind memories of Nazi occupied Paris. As the men part and step outside, the sound of jackboots on cobble stones come marching forth.

In his latest film, Transit, Christian Petzold held me in an extended jittery state, suspended on the razor's edge between fight and flight, fraught with fear lest I turn a corner and bump straight into a fascist…

"Christian Petzold tells emotionally rich, often female-led stories, which he intertwines closely with the settings they are located in. But he is most of all known for the stunning conclusions of his narratives – these moments have often been considered the best parts of his work, films like Phoenix and Barbara seem to only come full circle during their last beats. The reason for that, is Petzold’s way of letting the temporal and spatial aspects of the narrative fade into the background for a moment, narrowing his gaze down on the humanist, universal and timeless truths that the characters are confronted with.

With Transit, a mainly Marseille-set story about a man that gets caught up in complications of love and…

Sydney Film Festival 2018 - #7

Two men meet in a Parisian cafe and talk at the bar about visas and transit passes and getting the fuck out of dodge. Sirens punctuate their conversation as emergency vehicles are seen rocketing back and forth through the window panes behind them. There is talk of occupying forces and cleansing sweeps, bringing to mind memories of Nazi occupied Paris. As the men part and step outside, the sound of jackboots on cobble stones come marching forth.

In his latest film, Transit, Christian Petzold held me in an extended jittery state, suspended on the razor's edge between fight and flight, fraught with fear lest I turn a corner and bump straight into a fascist…

The strongest thing 'Transit' has is the world. It’s unclear what exactly has happened at first - we’re in modern-day Paris, but people whisper cautiously of rounding up people for “cleansing”, and the government seem to have the city under lockdown. Is there a terrorist threat? A riot? At some point, the truth dawn on you: this is a story about the Nazi occupation of France, but covered in contemporary trappings. It’s a chilling effect, seeing a more recognisable police force brutalise and hunt down those they consider ‘undesirable’, and following those escaping the net just before it draws to a close, with Petzold hinting at the looming destruction with masterful technique. It’s a clear allusion to the current refugee…

There's something strange about a colourised historical black and white photo. When we look at a black and white photo we see the memories captured but we don't remember them. Adding colour changes things, suddenly the people within the photos become more relatable, more real; the memory takes life.

Christian Petzold's 'Transit' does a similar thing; by means of transplanting history into the present. The film flawlessly sets itself in a contemporary France during WWII as a Jewish/German Technician tries to flee the country as fascists slowly encroach.

The film takes a refreshing, low to the ground, perspective on the events of WWII (particularly on escaping refugees) and through its setting makes obvious allusions to today's climate but without ever…