When I reflect on the films of Christian Petzold, a host of indelible images return to me. The end of Phoenix (2014), for instance, when Johannes (Ronald Zehrfeld) finally catches a glimpse of the serial number on Nelly’s arm (Nina Hoss), and cannot bear to bring himself to face her: the weight of his betrayal and deception, both within and beyond the film, crashing down on him. Or, in Jerichow (2008), when clandestine lovers Laura (Hoss) and Thomas (Benno Fürmann) are forced to embrace by a rose bush in order to obscure their faces from a group of school children walking past, and the gentle breeze that caresses them. In Afire (2023), which won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival—where Petzold also won Best Director in 2012 for Barbara—it is the shot of the corpses of gay lovers, who’ve died in a forest fire, wrapped in golden emergency blankets. These images return to me in the realm of dreams, they feel plucked from reality, are portals to the souls of their characters, evoked through sight and sound alone.