Undine

Christian Petzold took this film out of a finished scene in his previous one. In Transit, made in 2018, the woman played by Paula Beer drowns in the sea while Franz Rogowski's character waits on land for her to come back from death. Petzold said that image was the starting point for Undine, and he brought the same pair back together. The source is the water-nymph myth: abandoned by her lover, Undine must kill him and return to the water. Petzold moves that into present-day Berlin. The best idea here is her job. Undine is a historian who explains Berlin's urban development to tourists, using scale models of different periods. A woman rebuilding a vanished city on a table is pursued by her own legend. The city is built on water too, marsh underneath. Paula Beer won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin Film Festival in 2020; the award was presented on 29 February 2020. Who it is for: viewers who like German cinema that carries myth into the present, explains nothing and holds its tone steady. Who it is not for: anyone who wants the rules spelled out. The film never justifies the supernatural, and its final section runs entirely on the logic of the legend.