About this Event
The film, which premiered in 2025 at the Quinzaine des cinéastes in Cannes, tells the story of a young pianist who appears to find refuge with an older woman after an accident. A film about loss and grief told with summery lightness and subtle humour, yet pervaded by mystery and unease.
Laura is a music student at the University of the Arts in Berlin. She appears to be unhappy as we first catch sight of her - looking down over water. When she and her boyfriend and another couple leave the city for a weekend in the countryside, she wants to return to Berlin almost as soon as they arrive. Her boyfriend drives her to the nearest train station. But on the way there, an accident occurs. Laura’s boyfriend dies, while she herself survives almost unharmed. Shaken by the event, she finds shelter with an older woman named Betty, who lives near the site of the accident. The two women become friends, and Laura stays; it seems to her that she has found a place where she can overcome both the tragedy and her deeper, longstanding unhappiness. But the idyll is deceptive.
As in Afire (Roter Himmel), Petzold’s previous film, Miroirs No. 3, is set in the countryside during the summer. The atmosphere is light and airy. After the elements of water and fire, which played central roles in Petzold’s earlier films Undine and Afire respectively, this film is pervaded by the element of air. Yet the summery lightness is overshadowed by a latent sense of unease. People talk about cake batter, they are cheerful, and yet there is something mysterious, even a slight sense of horror in the air. Petzold revisits earlier motifs – the car accident, the lost daughter, the proximity to the realm of the dead – in order to tell a story about a family that has fallen apart.
Petzold again worked with a team and actors familiar to him – Paula Beer known from Transit, Undine, and Afire, as well as Barbara Auer, who appeared as early as 2000 in The State I Am In (Die innere Sicherheit) and later in Yella and Transit. Once more, Petzold, who uses music very sparingly, has inserted a beautiful musical moment. Laura and Betty’s son Max are sitting outside at a table, drinking beer and listening to a piece of music. It is not the melancholic third part of Ravel’s Miroirs, which gives the film its title, but the dynamic beat-driven Northern Soul classic The Night by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. A small moment of freedom – for the characters and for their performers.
Germany 2025. Colour, 86 mins. With English subtitles.
Directed by Christian Petzold. With Philip Froissant, Paula Beer, Barbara Auer, Victoire Laly, Matthias Brandt, Enno Trebs, Christian Koerner, Marcel Heuperman
Director Christian Petzold will be in London for Q&A’s at BFI Southbank (Wed 15 April, NFT 1) and Ciné Lumière (Thu 16 April, 18:00 hrs). Miroirs No. 3 will be released in UK cinemas on Friday 17 April.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Goethe-Institut London, 50 Princes Gate, London, United Kingdom
GBP 3.00 to GBP 6.00
