Phoenix

"Christian Petzold’s Phoenix oozes all the smoky atmospherics of a good noir but none of its lurid melodrama. Told in his characteristically direct, spare style, last beautifully wrought in the 2012 GDR-era Stasi drama Barbara, this enigmatic tale of Nelly Lenz, a concentration camp survivor (Nina Hoss) seeking to reunite with her husband Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld), who may have betrayed her, is spellbinding cinema. It’s a small marvel of lean construction, with stark, uncluttered images that haunt you long after."

"[Builds] to a climax so expertly orchestrated that one imagines he started with it in mind and worked the rest of the movie backward from there."

"A noir-ish and complex emotional thriller."

"A gloomy, implausible noir, set in the ruins of divided postwar Berlin."

"Petzold's collaboration with the actress Nina Hoss reaches a new level of intensity in Phoenix, a moving drama set in the rubble of post-war Berlin."

"Petzold's best film, and an early contender for one of the year's finest."

"Both a powerful allegory for post-war regeneration and a rich Hitchcockian tale of mistaken identity."

"A gripping study of treachery, identity and survival."