Wednesday 31 July 2019
10.00 am, 2.30 pm, 5.00 pm and 7.15 pm
Directed by Christian Petzold
Germany/ France Drama
Subtitled 101 mins M
As fascism spreads, German refugee Georg (Franz Rogowski), a young Jewish technician, flees to Marseille and assumes the identity of the dead writer whose transit papers he is carrying. Living among refugees from around the world, Georg falls for Marie (Paula Beer), a mysterious woman searching for her husband–the man whose identity he has stolen. Adapted from Anna Segher’s 1942 novel, director Petzold transposes the original story to the present, blurring periods to create a timeless exploration of the plight of displaced people, overlapping past and present like a cinematic superimposition. He does this subtly, partly by omitting Nazi iconography — the swastikas and all the rest. The sirens in the opening could be sounding in today’s France, with its street protests instituted in the wake of the 2015 terrorist attacks.
Reviews
“It’s a satisfying complexity…the conclusion, beautifully handled, offers tantalising questions about reality and artifice.” – David Stratton, The Australian
“Provocative, even startling, and more edifying than you might expect.” – Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal
“Transit invites viewers to trace their own speculative connections between Seghers’ narrative and the contemporary rise in neo-Nazism and anti-refugee sentiment, all while its subtext remains achingly moving..” – Guy Lodge, Variety