The films of Christian Petzold are haunted, populated by specters trapped between different worlds and realms, and in the German auteur’s latest, the appearance of such a figure destabilizes a rural family coping with loss.

Screening at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Miroirs No. 3 is a poignant ghost story that pulsates with grief and longing, and for a writer/director whose cinema is fixated on spirits and fragmented men and women in states of transition, it’s a low-key continuation of the themes and motifs that have typified a career marked by triumphs such as Phoenix, Barbara, and Transit.

His fourth straight collaboration with sensational actress Paula Beer, it’s a beguiling psychodrama about familial fractures, slippery identity, and the difficult means by which

See Full Page