Barbara

In 1980s East Germany, Barbara is a berlin doctor who applies for an exit visa to move West. When the visa is denied, she is banished to a medical clinic in a rural area. Deeply unhappy with her reassignment and fearful of her co-workers as possible Stasi informants, Barbara stays aloof, especially from the good natured clinic head, Andre. Instead, Barbara snatches moments with her lover as she secretly prepares to escape one day.

Despite her plans, Barbara learns more about her life, and this shines a new light on her desires and the people around her. With a new perspective, Barbara finds herself facing a painful moral dilemma.

Duration: 105
Production year: 2012
Country: Germany
Subtitles: min Subtitles PT

Silver Bear - Berlin International Film Festival

Christian Petzold

Christian Petzold is a German filmmaker, known as Hitchcock’s successor as master of suspense. In 2000, he directed his first feature-film, The State I Am In, a story about a couple of two German left-wing terrorists, that granted him several awards, of which the German Film Award for Best Film. His next three films premiered at the Berlin Film Festival: Wolfsburg (2003), in the Panorama section, where it won the FIPRESCI award, Ghosts (2005) and Yella (2007, in the official competition. Bárbara (2012) earned him the award for Best Director at the Berlin Film Festival. In the work of Petzold, filmmaker of the “Berlin School”, characters recurrently hide fundamental truths about themselves, thus finding their inner self continuously divided. In paranoia and anxiety, his films tackle forms of productivity and individuality habitual of the neoliberal economic model, questioning the “flexibility” of the labour world, without ever resorting to clichés. His most recent feature-film Undine (2020) won the Silver Bear for Best Actress (Paula Beer) and finds itself competing in the 2020 edition of LEFFEST.

Original title: Barbara

Christian Petzold

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