Yella

"Exquisitely frigid, menacing, disquieting." — Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

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Year: 2007
Country: Germany
Running time: 89 mins
Germany
Screenplay: Christian Petzold
Photography: Hans Fromm
Editor: Bettina Böhler
In German with English subtitles
M low level offensive language

With: Nina Hoss, Devid Striesow, Hinnerk Schönemann, Burghardt Klaussner, Barbara Auer, Christian Redl, Selin Barbara Petzold

Festivals: Berlin, Edinburgh 2007

Best Actress, Berlin Film Festival 2007


Christian Petzold (Something to Remind Me, Wolfsburg) is a master of ice-cold 21st-century paranoia.

"Yella might be pigeonholed as a chilly European drama, but it‘s also distinctively uncanny. Its accountant heroine, fleeing a nasty encounter with her ex-husband, teams up with a bullish speculator who enlists her help in playing psychological games at business meetings. Stranded in a claustrophobic nowhere-zone of business parks and autobahn hotels, the couple bond over spreadsheets. But behind these sleekly soulless manoeuvres, something creepily metaphysical is stirring. Yella plays like a German take on Antonioni, infused with the taciturn toughness of a David Mamet con-game story - but ultimately it‘s far weirder. Its star Nina Hoss is charismatically scary, in turns icy, simmering and glassily inscrutable." — Jonathan Romney, The Independent.