Christian Petzold’s latest, Miroirs No. 3, is a Hitchcock-tinged psychodrama featuring Paula Beer; it debuted at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight and opens in the U.S. on March 20 with a Film at Lincoln Center retrospective and a director appearance.
The German filmmaker Christian Petzold returns with Miroirs No. 3, a compact and quietly unnerving drama that blends domestic tension with uncanny undertones. After premiering in the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar at Cannes, the film is scheduled for a U.S. opening that will include a retrospective program and a special event where the director will be present on March 20. With Paula Beer leading the cast, Petzold continues to explore identity, memory, and the strange rituals people invent to survive loss.
At roughly 86 minutes, the film unfolds economically, favoring emotional texture and psychological detail over plot-heavy resolution. The picture’s ambiguous motives and deliberate withholding of explanation are deliberate artistic choices that echo the director’s previous work, inviting audiences to sit with uncertainty rather than receive tidy closure.
In plain terms, Miroirs No. 3 follows Laura, a Berlin piano student played by Paula Beer, who walks away from a devastating car crash only to find herself taken in by a local woman. As Laura recovers in the woman’s household, she forms a quietly intense bond with the woman and gradually becomes entangled with her husband and son. The film examines how grief circulates within families and how strangers can come to inhabit intimate roles.
The narrative is best described as a modern gothic slice: it trades large revelations for a steady accumulation of small, telling moments. The movie interrogates the stories we tell ourselves to suppress the past and the ways connection can alternately heal and unsettle. Petzold’s approach is minimal but precise, making each gesture and silence count.
Stylistically, the film leans into a restrained, Hitchcock-influenced sensibility. Critics have noted the echo of classic suspense films, but Petzold reframes those motifs within a domestic, psychological context. Where Hitchcock used spectacle and explicit menace, Petzold prefers shadowed recognition and a slow burn that multiplies questions rather than answering them.
The director’s ongoing collaboration with Paula Beer — their fourth together following films like Transit and Undine — yields a performance that is both inscrutable and emotionally accessible. Beer’s Laura operates as an axis around which the film’s anxieties spin: she is haunted yet magnetic, eliciting both care and suspicion from the household she infiltrates.
Miroirs No. 3 sits within the category of psychodrama, a term used here to highlight its focus on internal conflict and interpersonal fracture rather than external action. The film is melodic in pace and atmospheric in texture, often recalling musical structure — an apt link given the protagonist’s identity as a piano student and the film’s title, which references a composition by Maurice Ravel.
The film’s cinematography emphasizes quiet compositions and measured camera work that support its suspenseful undercurrent. Technical elements such as production design and editing are deployed with restraint, creating a domestic world that feels lived-in but slightly off-kilter. These choices sharpen themes of doubling, concealment, and the slow return of memory.
Miroirs No. 3 premiered at Cannes and was acknowledged as a standout in the Directors’ Fortnight. It will be distributed in the U.S. by 1-2 Special and opens with a notable program at Film at Lincoln Center. The U.S. engagement includes the director’s appearance on March 20, when audiences can expect screenings preceded by a retrospective of Petzold’s work.
The principal cast includes Paula Beer, Barbara Auer, Matthias Brandt, and Enno Trebs. The film’s credits list Christian Petzold as both director and writer, with producers Florian Koerner von Gustorf, Michael Weber, and Anton Kaiser; cinematography by Hans Fromm; and editing by Bettina Böhler. Presented in German with English subtitles, the film runs 86 minutes and has been described by reviewers as melancholic, mysterious, and rewarding for viewers willing to embrace ambiguity.
Critics have praised the film for its tonal control and Beer’s performance, while noting that its refusal to provide a conventional explanatory payoff may frustrate viewers looking for clear-cut answers. For many, that very reticence is part of the film’s power: it leaves space for reflection, inviting multiple viewings and conversation.
Miroirs No. 3 is a reminder of Petzold’s strengths as a filmmaker who can distill complex emotional states into concise cinematic form. It extends his interest in identity and displacement, this time through the frame of a household in flux. For festival audiences and cinephiles, the U.S. release — paired with a retrospective and the director’s presence — offers a rare chance to experience the film in a context that encourages deeper engagement.
Whether seen for Paula Beer’s quietly magnetic lead, Petzold’s craft, or the film’s unsettling questions about family and memory, Miroirs No. 3 rewards viewers who appreciate films that linger rather than explain.