Interview with Christian Petzold

This chapter presents an interview with Christian Petzold, which mainly took place in July 2011, with a shorter followup in October 2012, at Petzold's office in Berlin. Topics covered include where Petzold grew up; the first film he can remember seeing in a movie theater; the atmosphere in Berlin when he arrived to study literature; his decision to transfer to the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin; his collaborations Harun Farocki; how he finds Farocki's nonfiction films; the impression left by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the reunification of Germany in 1990; and the influence of genre films such as Detour on Cuba Libre , Near Dark on The State I Am In , and Driver on Wolfsburg on his own films.