Loosely based on a 1944 novel by German writer Anna Seghers and set in
present-day France, Christian Petzold’s Transit is a story of fateful migration,
in which conflicting agencies and shifting identities are translated into an
aesthetic principle. Its fluctuating interrelations between images, texts, and
temporalities transform the film into an ultimate “non-place,” which, except
for a few hints at fascism and a refugee crisis, provides no explanation or
overview of its political implications. Alongside the characters, spectators are
thrown into a world defined by fragile image spaces and zones of exclusion,
always haunted by fragments of the past and glimpses of an uncertain future.