The informal movement that critics like to call the Berlin School, as director Christoph Hochhäusler puts it, is a loose affiliation of filmmakers who emerged around the time the Berlin Wall fell. The founding figures—Thomas Arslan, Christian Petzold, and Angela Schanelec—and their younger colleagues are not bound by a manifesto or by any singular aesthetic. Nonetheless, their observant portrayals of characters in flux offer a compelling cinematic expression of the search for new identities in a time of societal change. The films of the Berlin School have resonated profoundly since the mid-1990s, making it one of the most influential auteur movements to emerge from Europe in the new millennium.

 

This volume, which accompanies an eponymous exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, includes essays, observations, and interviews by several of the key figures and illustrates stills from thirty-four of their films. 112 pp.; 100 illus.