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THE STATE I AM IN
The mirror image to Sidney Lumet‘s RUNNING ON EMPTY (1988), which Petzold didn’t watch until THE STATE I AM IN was completed: Richy Müller and Barbara Auer as ex-terrorists, Julia Hummer as their 15-year-old daughter on the run with them. They have to return to Germany and rob a bank to get by, while their daughter is in love with a surfer dude she met abroad and hooks up with again at home. What’s more, he really does inhabit a luxury apartment with floor heating as he claimed. The family crashes there… “I once saw a film by Buñuel about a pubescent girl with the power to destroy men. Julia Hummer plays a girl who never went to school, never hung out at the ice cream parlor, never cried at a party, but has read about all those things and developed such a force of longing that she crafts reality in her own image.“
Meet the director
Christian Petzold
Christian Petzold was born in Hilden, North Rhine Westphalia, in 1960. He moved to Berlin in 1981, studying German lit and theater studies at the Free University. He graduated in 1989 and went on to study directing at dffb film school, working as assistant director for Hartmut Bitomsky and Harun Farocki, and writing film criticism. Petzold shot his graduating film PILOTINNEN 1994. After TV movies CUBA LIBRE and DIE BEISCHLAFDIEBIN he shot his first theatrical film THE STATE I AM IN (2000), a daram about a teen and his parents, who are wanted terrorists. The film won a string of awards, including the German Film Prize in Gold as Best Film. In 2001, Petzold’s collaboration with Nina Hoss began on SOMETHING TO REMIND ME, with whom he went on to shoot a series of films: WOLFSBURG (2003) won the Berlinale FIPRESCI Award and the Adolf Grimme Prize in Gold. Nina Hoss also starred in YELLA (2007), JERICHOW (2009) and BARBARA (2012). He shot an episode of TV three-parter DREILEBEN (2011). Petzold’s latest theatrical film PHOENIX (2013/2014), also starring Nina Hoss, won the International Film Critics’ Award at San Sebastián Film Festival.