From the outset of meeting Laura (Paula Beer), she seems lost and adrift. Peering over the railing of the highway while cars honk in passing, it’s unclear what she is doing here, nor what she plans to do. Mirrors No. 3, Christian Petzold’s fourth collaboration with Beer, is a soft and delicately observed tale of doubling and desire. Laura is just one of many characters seemingly floating on by, easily confused for, and taken in by, whoever happens to be near. Whether Laura is considering suicide is an elusive question that goes unanswered. A university music student, Laura has an attuned ear but a dark air about her. One day, as she is driving from Berlin to a weekend away with her boyfriend, Jakob (Philip Froissant), she catches eyes with a woman tending to her garden in the country. For whatever reason, Laura immediately demands to be taken back home, and on the road back, she and Jakob crash right outside her home. He dies while she gets nothing but a scratch. Betty (Barbara Auer) takes Laura in and, with a shocking amount of casualness, agrees to house her as she recovers. Though Laura is seemingly uninjured, she prefers to stick around Betty’s country home, drinking coffee and eating pastries and adorning the clothing laid out for her.

As Betty, Auer carries a heaviness in the eyes, and it is to her and Petzold’s credit that a profound sense of loss is communicated without it ever being spelled out. In a brief moment so quick it almost goes undetected, Betty calls Laura by the name Yelena, before correcting herself with alacrity. Who Yelena is or was remains a mystery for much of the film, but whatever the case, Laura is careful and kind not to pry. Laura is clearly some kind of replacement for Yelena. Betty and her emotionally distant husband, Richard (Matthias Brandt), a car mechanic who operates a business with harmless illegal activity with his son, Max (Enno Trebs), are hospitable to Laura but also skittish, as if terrified to scare away a stray kitten. Over the course of nine days, Laura embeds herself into the fabric of this delicate familial fabric. Her mere presence seems to signal a healing shift. Betty and Richard immediately start spending more time together, plucking plums from the river to bake a cake; Max’s rough exterior melts to reveal a music-loving gentleman.
Miroirs No. 3 Continues Petzold’s Predilection For The Unspeakable Bonds Between Strangers

With clean symbolism, Petzold utilizes the very house as a metonym for the family unit. An out-of-tune piano, a dripping faucet, a temperamental dishwasher, a seat-less bicycle; these are just some of the domestic items that are on the fritz and which Betty had casually accepted in their respective conditions until Laura’s auspicious arrival. Suddenly, new life blooms.

Miroirs No. 3 is a bucolic, poetic film of simple beauty with light, magical touches about the ability of a stranger’s love. Like the matriarch at its center, it is a warm, hospitable film that welcomes you in before divulging its painful secrets. Even as the truths bleed out and Laura finds herself in a strange predicament, Petzold’s characters act with charming levels of self-interest, never behaving harmfully nor obscenely. In one of Petzold’s most powerful final acts, the filmmaker elicits the prowess of communication via art. Through space and time, through life and death, connections are forged. People can be whomever you want them to be.
Miroirs No. 3 screened at the 2025 AFI Film Festival. This review was originally published on October 28th, 2025.

Release Date

March 27, 2026

Runtime

86 minutes

Director

Christian Petzold

Writers

Christian Petzold

Producers

Caroline von Senden, Julius Windhorst, Claudia Tronnier, Michael Weber, Florian Koerner von Gustorf, Anton Kaiser