MIROIRS NO. 3
A modest addition to a great director's filmography
Directed by: Christian Petzold
Starring: Paula Beer, Matthias Brandt, Barbara Auer, Enno Trebs
Certificate: tbc
Released: 17 April 2026
Rating: 8/10
Though he began his career in the late 1990s as part of the Berliner Schule movement of politically engaged German directors, Christian Petzold's films increasingly feel like fables or dark fairy tales. Undine (2020) was a version of the myth of a water nymph hoping to gain an immortal soul, updated to modern Berlin. Afire (2023) saw apocalyptic forest fires engulfing the summer dreams of an earnest young writer. Now, with Miroirs No. 3 – named for the oceanic third movement of Ravel's 1905 piano suite – he delivers an eerie story of mysterious doubles and broken families in the German countryside.
Once again his lead is the coolly enigmatic Paula Beer, shaping up to be the most compelling European actor of her generation. Here she plays Laura (and the film draws consciously on every echo of that name through film history, from Hitchcock to Preminger and Lynch), a troubled Berlin music student and sole survivor of a car crash in the Brandenburg countryside. Her boyfriend dies (and is swiftly forgotten), but Laura is miraculously unharmed and taken in by Betty, a middle-aged woman who lives alone in a charming but dilapidated old farmhouse. They strike an instant, uncanny chord of affection and Laura asks if she can stay for good. But as Betty's errant, estranged husband and grown son enter the picture, it becomes clear that the family are turning to the new arrival as a way of dealing with their own unaddressed traumas.
Though the film teases at ideas of grief and madness, those hoping for dramatic escalation may be disappointed. The plot revelations can be seen coming from some distance down the autobahn, and Petzold purposefully mutes any overly neat resolution. The director has said that the challenge for filmmakers today is to tell stories about a society that has given up on the future – characters whose only recourse is to make do and mend their broken circumstances. This is a modest addition to a great director's filmography, but its modesty feels profound.
