Transit (2019)
80%RT Audience Score: 64%
Awards & Nominations: 9 wins & 27 nominations
Transit lives up to its title with a challenging drama that captures characters – and puts the audience – in a state of flux and exerts an unsettling pull
Transit is like a game of cat and mouse, but instead of a cat, it’s the Nazis and instead of a mouse, it’s a bunch of refugees trying to escape. It’s a thrilling ride that will keep you on the edge of your seat, wondering who will make it out alive. Plus, Franz Rogowski’s performance is so captivating, you’ll forget you’re watching a movie and feel like you’re right there with him. Don’t miss this one!
Production Company(ies)
Columbia Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Relativity Media,
Distributor
Music Box Films
Release Type
Theatrical, Theatrical (Limited)
Filming Location(s)
Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône, France
MPAA / Certificate
Not Rated
Year of Release
2019
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Color:Color
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Sound mix:Dolby
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Aspect ratio:2.39 : 1
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Runtime:1h 41m
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Language(s):German, French, French, Sign, L
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Country of origin:France, Germany
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Release date:Release Date (Theaters): Mar 1, 2019 Limited
Release Date (Streaming): Jun 27, 2019
Genre(s)
History/Drama
Keyword(s)
Transit, History, Drama, German, Christian Petzold, Florian Koerner von Gustorf, Antonin Dedet, Franz Rogowski, Paula Beer, Godehard Giese, Barbara Auer, Sebastian Hülk, Maryam Zaree, IMAX, Scope, box office, gross USA, Music Box Films, reviewed by David Edelstein, Michael Phillips, Steve Macfarlane, J Hoberman, Adam Nayman, Claudia Puig, Brian Eggert, Taylor Baker, Joseph Fahim, Cassidy Olsen, MPAA rating, challenging drama, characters, audience, flux, unsettling pull, adaptation, period novel, World War II, refugee crisis, stolen identity, Kafkaesque narrative, trauma, political oppression, timeless, history, alive
Worldwide gross: $1,012,747
Worldwide gross (inflation-adjusted): $1,170,183
Worldwide gross ranking (inflation-adjusted): 2,559
Worldwide tickets sold (est.): 127,610
US/Canada gross: $815,290
US/Canada gross (inflation-adjusted): $942,031
US/Canada gross ranking (inflation-adjusted): 2,201
US/Canada opening weekend: $31,931
US/Canada opening weekend (inflation-adjusted): $36,895
US/Canada opening weekend ranking (inflation-adjusted): 2,299
Budget and Earnings Details
Production budget (est.): NA
Production budget (inflation-adjusted): NA
Production budget ranking: NA
Marketing and distribution budget (inflation-adjusted est.): NA
Box office net earnings to date (inflation-adjusted est.): NA
ROI to date (est.): NA
ROI ranking: NA
Paula Beer – Marie Weidel
Godehard Giese – Richard
Barbara Auer – Frau mit Hunden
Sebastian Hülk – Paul
Maryam Zaree – Melissa
Christian Petzold – Director/Writer
Florian Koerner von Gustorf – Producer
Antonin Dedet – Producer
Director(s)
Christian Petzold
Writer(s)
Christian Petzold
Producer(s)
Florian Koerner von Gustorf, Antonin Dedet
Film Festivals
Berlin, Toronto
Awards & Nominations
9 wins & 27 nominations
Academy Awards
All Critics (181) | Top Critics (46) | Fresh (171) | Rotten (10)
Once Transit’s bitterly ironic vision takes hold, it eats into the mind.
December 20, 2019
David Edelstein
New York Magazine/Vulture
TOP CRITIC
An audacious reminder that there’s more than one way to adapt a so-called “period” novel for a new era.
December 20, 2019 | Rating: 3.5/4
Michael Phillips
Chicago Tribune
TOP CRITIC
Christian Petzold’s white-hot existentialist noir Transit is perhaps the best World War II film since Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book, even if it hinges on a suspension of disbelief that’ll be too far a stretch for some.
December 20, 2019 | Rating: 3.5/4
Steve Macfarlane
Slant Magazine
TOP CRITIC
Inhabiting a realm between the past and present, Europe and America, and also cinema and literature, [Petzold’s characters] are, in Hannah Arendt’s phrase, “living ghosts among the ruins of our times.”
December 20, 2019
J. Hoberman
The New York Review of Books
TOP CRITIC
…it makes the case for Petzold as the decade’s most exemplary foreign arthouse auteur.
December 9, 2019
Adam Nayman
The Ringer
TOP CRITIC
It’s beguiling and kind of a labyrinth of a movie… Very timely.
September 20, 2019
Claudia Puig
FilmWeek (KPCC – NPR Los Angeles)
TOP CRITIC
Transit is another masterpiece from the German director and an urgently relevant symbolization of the contemporary refugee crisis.
March 3, 2022 | Rating: 4/4
Brian Eggert
Deep Focus Review
Episode 35: Triple Frontier / Climax / Black Mother / Transit
September 14, 2021 | Rating: 88/100
Taylor Baker
Drink in the Movies
By stripping away the historical context of the story, Petzold has created a daring, radical, melodramatic thriller that taps into the fundamental pains of displacement and exile.
July 2, 2021
Joseph Fahim
Middle East Eye
An on-the-road tale of stolen identity that’s imbued with suffocating urgency and paranoia, Transit uses many of the conventions of noir to weave a Kafkaesque narrative about how memory functions in the face of trauma and political oppression.
March 8, 2021 | Rating: 3/4
Cassidy Olsen
The Improper Bostonian
Franz Rogowski had a fascinatingly off-kilter presence that helped make Christian Petzold’s enigmatic Transit one of the best films of the year so far.
October 15, 2020
Dennis Harvey
48 Hills
Part bureaucratic head-scrambler and part sweeping romance — difficult to pin down, but always intriguing.
August 16, 2020 | Rating: 4/5
Tom Beasley
VultureHound…
Plot
German troops are fast approaching Paris. Georg, a German refugee, escapes to Marseille in the nick of time. In his luggage, he carries the documents of an author, Weidel, who has taken his own life in fear of his persecutors. Those documents include a manuscript, letters and visa assurance from the Mexican embassy. Everything changes when Georg falls in love with the mysterious Marie. Is it devotion or calculation that has led her to share her life with a doctor, Richard, before journeying on in search of her husband? He’s said to have surfaced in Marseille in possession of a Mexican visa for him and his wife.
Trivia
Goofs / Tidbits
Franz Rogowski’s performance in Transit is described as “fascinatingly off-kilter.”
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