Nina Hoss and Christian Petzold on Phoenix
Over the past fifteen years, German director Christian Petzold and actor Nina Hoss have worked together on six films, creating dynamic characters that highlight Hoss’s powerful talent. With Phoenix, their latest collaboration, now out on Blu-ray and DVD, the two have crafted a singularly haunting Holocaust drama. Hoss is glorious as Nelly, a former cabaret singer and Auschwitz survivor who has undergone facial reconstruction surgery and becomes caught up in a convoluted scheme devised by her husband (played by fellow Petzold regular Ronald Zehrfeld), who no longer recognizes her. In the clip below, the actor and filmmaker discuss their collaboration on this film and the intense preparation process Hoss undertook as she attempted to inhabit the the mental torment and elaborate complexity of the film’s protagonist.
