Metrograph

Petzold’s debut feature, co-written with his former teacher Harun Farocki, stars Richy Müller and Barbara Auer as Hans and Clara, a German couple living abroad in Portugal whose lives—as well as that of their already rebellious 15-year-old daughter, Jeanne (Julia Hummer), lending the film its point-of-view—are upended when their long-ago activities as members of a Red Army Faction-esque left-wing terrorist group come to light, sending them scrambling back to a Germany that has undergone massive changes since their departure decades ago, to reconnect with old comrades and, hopefully, scrape together money for a permanent escape. The cornerstone of a loose trilogy with Petzold’s later Ghosts and Yella, and a foundational text of the Berlin School.