Singapore International Film Festival 2018
Transit
Language
German - subtitles to be advised
Director
Christian Petzold
Cast
Franz Rogoswki, Paula Beer, Lilien Batman
Synopsis
As German forces close in on modern-day France, Jewish refugee Georg is desperate to evacuate the war-torn continent. His golden ticket comes in the form of transit papers to Mexico, belonging to a recently deceased author. Georg assumes this identity and flees to the port city of Marseille—then finds that the transit visa was not the only thing the writer left behind.
Rather than update Anna Seghers’s eponymous WWII novel to a present-day setting, director Christian Petzold completely dislocates it from history. Aided by Franz Rogowski’s measured turn as a man haunted by the ghosts of war, Petzold turns Marseille into an anachronistic limbo, overflowing with stories that seem ripped from tomorrow’s headlines. Transit is a Kafkaesque Casablanca born from the contemporary refugee crisis.