Transit
Entry updated 7 September 2026. Tagged: Film.
German film (2018). Schramm Film, Piffl Median. Written and directed by Christian Petzold, based on the novel Transit (1944; trans James Austin Galston 1944) by Anna Seghers (1900-1983). Cast includes Lilen Batman, Paula Beer, Godehard Giese, Franz Rogowski and Maryam Zezee. 101 minutes. Colour.
Seghers' wartime novel, based on her own experiences as an escapee from Nazi Germany and attempts to gain refugee status, is transposed to what appears to be an Alternate-World contemporary France, with deliberate ambiguity in time and setting. In occupied France, Georg (Rogowski), a dissident German living in Paris, and apparently a survivor of an internment camp, is tasked with delivering letters to a famous writer, Franz Weidel. Only just escaping arrest, he discovers that Weidel has killed himself, leaving behind an unpublished manuscript, which Georg takes with him. Fleeing to Marseille with his wounded friend Heinz, who dies on route, he meets Heinz's deaf North African wife Melissa (Zezee) to bring her the news of Heinz's death, and takes their son Driss (Batman) under his wing. Both Melissa and Driss are living in the country illegally, and hope to escape over the Pyrenees. Georg attempts to hand in Weidel's papers at the consulate, but is mistaken for Weidel, and given transit papers for himself and Weidel's estranged wife Marie (Beer). Thus begins a complex series of attempts to get himself, Melissa, Driss, Marie and her lover Richard (Giese) out of the country before the invading German forces reach Marseille. Driss feels betrayed by Georg for wanting to leave, and he and his mother disappear without a word. The ship Marie and Richard escape on sinks, with no survivors. Georg is left in Marseille, helplessly waiting for the City to be overrun.
Though it is not entirely free of art house Clichés, particularly in the severely under-developed female characters, this is a measured and controlled depiction of the complexities of living in a fearful political environment, where betrayal can come at any moment, and good intentions can be taken for profiteering and exploitation. The plot is obviously based on Nazi Occupied France, but there is no attempt to disguise that the action is set in contemporary Marseille, with references to recent films, sport and architecture. Some of the characters dress in 1940s fashion, others do not; no one has a mobile phone, and typewritten letters are the most used form of communication. The use of a largely unseen but seemingly omniscient narrator, and the shifting of various assumed Identities, create an air of a particularly serious form of Postmodern game-playing, but without sacrificing any clarity of vision in its despairing depiction of the effects of Fascism and intolerance on people who are simply trying to survive. [CWa]
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