Forget the East-West Divide; It's Berlin Vs. Munich For the German director Christian Petzold, 52, the subject of his latest film, "Barbara," a character study of an East German doctor torn between her sense of professional responsibility and a desire to escape to the West with her lover, is one that hits close to home. He was born in the West to parents who had fled together from the East, but as a child and adolescent, he would return with them to East Germany each summer, there to enjoy the warmth and affection of the many relatives who had remained behind, while also experiencing what he now describes as an "atmosphere that was very, very mistrustful" in the larger society. Mr. Petzold thus began his feature film career, in 2000, with something of a hybrid upbringing and outlook. He is one of the leading figures of what has become known as the Berlin School of filmmaking, which emphasizes realism and often tackles political or social issues: just before "Barbara," he made "Jerichow," an adaptation of "The Postman Always Rings Twice" featuring an Afghanistan war veteran and a Turkish immigrant scheming over the character played by Nina Hoss, who also plays the title role in "Barbara." "Barbara," which Germany has submitted as its candidate for the Oscar for best foreign-language film, made a strong impression on the festival circuit and opens commercially on Friday. Mr. Petzold was in New York this fall for showings at the New York Film Festival when he sat down for to discuss "Barbara" and its chances for an Oscar. In a story we published about you in 2009, you said, "I think like a Westerner, so the East is an interesting region to me." Is that the impulse that drove you to make this film? I am a Westerner who studied in Berlin, and Berlin was an island in which all the German Democratic Republic was the sea. It surrounds West Berlin, but it doesn't have an identity of smells and tastes, only a historical identity, and my parents came out of this sea, as in a myth or a legend. But they told us nothing of living in that sea in the '50s and '60s, when they were growing up in the East. After the wall came down in 1989, we would go out on bicycles into the former GDR and it was totally different from the West, because nothing was renovated. And in the East there are no suburbs, and all around is agriculture. So I saw for the first time in my life wide-screen pictures, like in a John Ford movie, and I said, "We have to tell stories here." Not just because it looks so nice, but also because it's our country, but it's totally strange to us. Why did you set the film in 1980, rather than earlier, in a more idealistic time, or later, when the system was coming apart? I always want to make pictures where the past infects the present, where the characters want to come into the future, but the past is like phantoms. I wanted to make a period picture, because our time is always grabbing the history. From the perspective of 2012, we know there is light at the end of the tunnel for people like Barbara and Andre. But they don't know that. All these people in "Barbara," they sense something will change, but they are asking how can we go on with love and living when there is a crisis? "Barbara" is the fifth film you have made with Nina Hoss. What is it you see in her as an actress that makes you keep going back to her again and again? You know, we talked just two days ago about the next project together, because we are going to do a sixth one. I want with Nina to build something like Werner Fassbinder made, I want to have a fixed ensemble, 10 or 15 actors I can work with together, as a team. But without Fassbinder's sexuality, because I don't want to (engage in sex with) my team. Our industry doesn't really exist in Germany, and when something doesn't exist, you have to make a group. This is the idea I got when I met Nina 11 years ago, because as an actress she is fantastic at thinking. Not feeling, but thinking? Feeling is her job. But at our first rehearsal, I was really disappointed, and I didn't like her, because she didn't have any reaction in her face. I'm talking for three hours about why I want to make this movie, and showing pictures, and comics and graphic novels. She's sitting there with no reaction on her face, I thought she was a little bit blunt and dumb, and she's always writing. Then we had our first day of shooting, and I was a little anxious, because I thought she was a bit empty. But this emptiness was a great quality, it was a production of emptiness. She makes herself empty to find a place for something new. Not like you empty your apartment, but in the sense of "I don't want to have ideas until I'm deep in the character." No preconceptions, and to lose preconceptions you must work very very hard. Let's talk about some Oscar-related subjects. Have you ever had anything to do with the Oscar before? Never, because my relationship to this German structure was not so good. They've never sent my movies on. So why the change in attitude this time? I think it has something to do with this being a period picture. And the other thing is that it was so successful in France and Switzerland and Sweden, in Europe, and it was the first time that the Berlin group could succeed a little bit in a material way. So that notion of the Berlin group is still out there? Not so much in Germany, because we don't talk, the members. We are friends, we talk about movies, but we don't have an identity. But when I went to Greece last week, everyone was talking about this Berlin School. It exists because people say it exists. And therefore I have to think about it. I'm trying to put myself into the head of an Academy voter. In "The Lives of Others" there is a fairly recent example of another film that looks at repressions and mistrust in East Germany and ended up winning the foreign-language film Oscar. Do you think those voters are going to be willing to go in this direction again? So many people asked me during the Berlinale if "Barbara" is the answer to "The Lives of Others." But during my own work I did not think about "The Lives of Others." I knew that when I started this period picture I had to withstand the comparison. But you know he's Munich and I'm Berlin, and between Munich and Berlin there's a bigger wall than between East and West Berlin. That's an tantalizing statement, but I'm not sure what it means. When we meet people from the Munich film school, we are always a little bit aggressive. I remember that always when we are in festivals, when I was a student, they have their short movies and we have ours. Our short movies are 5 minutes and credits 10 seconds; their short movies are 5 minutes and credits 15 minutes, because of the sponsoring and everything. And they have CinemaScope, they use every production value, which is great, and we have a production value that is poor, but is proud to be poor. So there was a big big borderline between us.