Visibly unsettled from the film’s early frames, Berlin-based piano student Laura (Paula Beer) is further shaken by a fatal car crash during a trip to the country. Physically unhurt but emotionally unstable, Laura is taken in by a local woman, Betty (Barbara Auer), with whom she develops an easy rapport. But when Laura meets Betty’s husband and son, she soon finds herself in an increasingly strange family situation.
With this eerie, enigmatic psychodrama, German director Christian Petzold returns to the Hitchcockian inspiration present in Phoenix (VIFF 2014), this time adding a gentle twist to the uncanny doublings of Vertigo (1958) by layering on the familial disquiet of Shadow of a Doubt (1943). A standout at the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar at Cannes, Miroirs No. 3 marks Petzold’s fourth collaboration with Paula Beer (Transit, Undine, Afire), who turns in a performance at once inscrutable and emotionally resonant. Titled after a composition by Maurice Ravel, the film is a masterful study of grief and the unusual things we do to cope with it.
Community Partner
Paula Beer, Barbara Auer, Matthias Brandt, Enno Trebs
Germany
2025
In German with English subtitles
At SFU Woodwards
At Fifth Avenue
Book Tickets
Credits & Director
Producer
Florian Koerner von Gustorf, Michael Weber, Anton Kaiser
Screenwriter
Christian Petzold
Cinematography
Hans Fromm
Editor
Bettina Böhler
Production Design
K.D. Gruber
Christian Petzold
Christian Petzold was born in Hilden in 1960. After studying German and theater at the Free University of Berlin, he studied film at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB), directing his first feature film in 1995. Petzold’s film The State I Am In (2000) won Gold at the German Film Awards, and he was awarded the Berlinale Silver Bear for Best Director in 2012 for Barbara. His most recent film, Afire, won the Berlinale Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize in 2023.
Filmography: Ghost Trilogy (2000-2007); Jerichow (2008); Love in Times of Oppressive Systems Trilogy (2012-2018); Undine (2020); Afire (2023)
Photo by Marco Krueger
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
A Long Winter
Based on a short story by Colm Toibin and set in the Rockies in the 1950s, the latest from All of Us Strangers director Andrew Haigh is a piercing emotional drama about a family facing hardships over a few months in a cabin far above town.
Rebecca Horn – the Secret Life of Things
Rebecca Horn's extraordinary biography is interwoven with her surreal oeuvre. An essential document of one of the 20th century's most influential artists, Rebecca Horn – The Secret Life of Things celebrates the unsung legacy of a pioneering visionary.
Image: © Rebecca Horn
What Remains
Stuck in a big city in a mind-numbing domestic routine, a young poetess finds herself at crossroads when her role as a mother and wife starts to overshadow her identity as an artist.
School for Defectors
School for Defectors is an intimate and quietly uplifting documentary that follows a group of 20 teenagers, children of North Korean defectors, as they adjust to life and education at Jangdaehyun School in Busan, South Korea.
Fruit Gathering
Achingly sensual and graced with fine performances, Fruit Gathering depicts embattled desire in a conservative society. Two working-class women fall into a romantic relationship in contemporary Myanmar — but is their love real, or borne of desperation?