Christian Petzold's Barbara Selected to Represent Germany at the Oscars

Christian Petzold's latest film, Barbara, will be Germany's official entry at next year's foreign language Oscars. The film is based on a script by Petzold and Harun Farocki, who also collaborated with the German director on his acclaimed The State I Am In (2000) and Ghosts (2005).

Barbara, which earlier this year won the Reader Jury of the "Berliner Morgenpost" prize and Silver Bear award for Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival, stars Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Mark Waschke and Rainer Bock.

German drama set in pre-Berlin Wall East Germany in 1980. Nina Hoss stars as Barbara, a young doctor starting a new job at a small hospital in the provinces. It transpires she has been transferred there by the government as punishment for applying for an exit visa from the GDR. Her aim is to escape to the West to join her boyfriend Jörg (Waschke), who has been planning her escape via the Baltic Sea. Barbara, detached and self-contained, keeps her head down and gets on with her work, despite being subjected to random home checks and intrusive body searches. However, as the weeks go by, she becomes both beguiled and confused by the attentions of her new boss, Andre (Zehrfeld). Can she trust him, or has he been assigned to keep tabs on her?

Note: In the United Kingdom, Barbara will be distributed by Soda Pictures. The film will open in select theaters on September 28th.