Nina Hoss
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“One Character Fuels the Next One”: Nina Hoss, Back To One, Episode 364
Nina Hoss is one of our most respected stage, film, and television actors working internationally. She is known for her collaborations with director Christian Petzold in films such as Barbara and Phoenix, as well as Tar opposite Cate Blanchett, the celebrated series Homeland, and her latest Hedda, opposite Tessa Thompson. On this episode, she talks about what drew her to Nia DaCosta’s bold new reimagining of the Ibsen’s classic. She gives us a peek into her process, talks about the “journey of filmmaking” she and Petzold embarked on together, environment as communication, how The Cherry Orchard in Brooklyn “landed at […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Oct 30, 2025 -
Fabricated: Petzold’s Astounding Phoenix
Still bearing facial scars from vain attempts to kill her in a concentration camp, the festering infection that followed, and drastic plastic surgery to re-create her (the doctor’s term) in a hospital in her bombed-out hometown of Berlin, the once ravishing Jewish chanteuse Nelly Lenz (Nina Hoss) recklessly saunters out alone into the night to search for the Aryan pianist husband she has not seen since her arrest. Extremely self-conscious, she asks a blind street musician where to even begin looking. Pointedly, he recommends the American sector: That’s where the clubs and the action are. The film’s title is the […]
by Howard Feinstein on Jul 24, 2015 -
Survivor’s Song: Christian Petzold on Phoenix
The more you consider the nuances of German filmmaker Christian Petzold’s latest feature, Phoenix, the more difficult it is to articulate exactly what this mysterious and allusive drama is really about. It’s the director’s seventh feature for cinema (discounting the five he has made for television), and the fifth he has made in collaboration with actress and avowed muse Nina Hoss. While not quite stripped down to Bressonian levels of formal curtness, Petzold’s style is without fuss. As he explains below, his mode of storytelling is generally more reflective and assiduously built through alternating perspectives than it is literal or […]
by David Jenkins on Jul 23, 2015 -
Christian Petzold on Barbara
With Barbara, German auteur Christian Petzold (Yella, Jerichow) delivers one of 2012’s better character studies, a tense and sparing Cold War-era drama about a female doctor (Petzold muse Nina Hoss) who’s relegated to a hospital near the Baltic Sea after trying to leave the German Democratic Republic. It’s 1980, and the movie effortlessly conveys the period in all its stark unease. Honored at the 62nd Berlinale and serving as Germany’s official Foreign-Language entry for the 85th Academy Awards, Barbara sees its eponymous heroine grapple with the restraints of politics and her own fears in a manner as mysterious as it […]
by R. Kurt Osenlund on Dec 21, 2012
