Screened as part of NZIFF 2008

Yella 2007

Directed by Christian Petzold

Christian Petzold (Something to Remind Me, Wolfsburg) confirms his status as one of Germany's best young directors with this intense, off-centre thriller.

Germany In German with English subtitles
89 minutes 35mm

Director, Screenplay

Photography

Hans Fromm

Editor

Bettina Böhler

With

Nina Hoss
,
Devid Striesow
,
Hinnerk Schönemann
,
Burghardt Klaussner
,
Barbara Auer
,
Christian Redl
,
Selin Barbara Petzold

Festivals

Berlin, Edinburgh 2007

Awards

Best Actress, Berlin Film Festival 2007

Elsewhere

Christian Petzold (Something to Remind Me, Wolfsburg) is a master of ice-cold 21st-century paranoia.

"Yella might be pigeonholed as a chilly European drama, but it‘s also distinctively uncanny. Its accountant heroine, fleeing a nasty encounter with her ex-husband, teams up with a bullish speculator who enlists her help in playing psychological games at business meetings. Stranded in a claustrophobic nowhere-zone of business parks and autobahn hotels, the couple bond over spreadsheets. But behind these sleekly soulless manoeuvres, something creepily metaphysical is stirring. Yella plays like a German take on Antonioni, infused with the taciturn toughness of a David Mamet con-game story - but ultimately it‘s far weirder. Its star Nina Hoss is charismatically scary, in turns icy, simmering and glassily inscrutable." — Jonathan Romney, The Independent