February 18 – March 10, 2022
Germany
Year: 2018/2020
Runtime: 90 min.
Age rating: 12 years
Director: Christian Petzold
Genre: Romance
Starring: Paula Beer, Franz Rogowski, Maryam Zaree
Undine lives in Berlin, in a small flat on Alexanderplatz. She works on contract as a city historian, living an urban life of one always on call. When her boyfriend Johannes leaves, her world collapses. The magic is destroyed. As the old fairy tale (and her namesake) go, if her love is betrayed, she must kill the faithless man and return to the water from which she once came. Undine must defend herself against this curse of destroyed love.
She meets the industrial diver Christoph (Franz Rogowski) and falls in love. It is a new, happy, completely different love, full of curiosity and trust. Christoph follows her lectures about the city of Berlin built on swamps, and Undine accompanies him on his dives in the sunken world of a reservoir. But he senses that she is running away from something. She has to face the curse if she does not want to lose this love. UNDINE is Christian Petzold's fascinating reinterpretation of the myth of the mysterious mermaid Undine, who can only live an earthly life through the love of a human being: a modern fairy tale in a disenchanted world, the story of a love for life and death.