Ranking All Of Director Christian Petzold’s Movies
“What are Christian Petzold’s Best Movies?” We looked at all of Petzold’s directed filmography and ranked them against one another to answer that very question!
We took all of the movies directed by Christian Petzold and looked at their Rotten Tomato Critic, Rotten Tomato User, IMDB, and Letterboxd scores, ranking them against one another to see which movies came out on top. The movies are ranked in our list below based on which movies have the highest overall score between all 4 review sites in comparison with all of the other movies by the same director. The process is all very scientific with no flaws at all.
Video version of the article:
The full ranking chart is also included below the countdown on the bottom of the page.
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The Top Film’s Of Christian Petzold
13 ) Drifters (1995)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 6
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 10
- IMDB User Review Score: 12
- Letterboxd User Score: 8
Drifters tells of Karin, a past-her-prime cosmetics saleswoman, with her increasing exasperation with her life and her dreams of leaving it all behind and living in Paris. An unlikely but entertaining plot develops, where anything can happen.
12 ) Cuba Libre (1996)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 6
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 10
- IMDB User Review Score: 6
- Letterboxd User Score: 13
Tom is constantly running into problems and gets beaten up time and time again.
11 ) Yella (2007)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 5
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 9
- IMDB User Review Score: 12
- Letterboxd User Score: 8
Drama about a woman who is estranged from the possessive and violent husband who can’t bring himself to give her up. When their fraught interaction finally comes to a dramatic conclusion, her life takes an odd shift.
10 ) Ghosts (2005)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 6
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 7
- IMDB User Review Score: 11
- Letterboxd User Score: 8
Nina, an end-of-teenage orphan with mental problems, starts a new job as a garden cleaner when she meets Toni. They fell in love with each other, but soon Toni starts betraying Nina. In the meantime, Francoise is picked up at a psychic department of a Berlin hospital by her husband, Pierre. After seeing Nina, Francoise believes that she has found her kidnapped daughter Marie, but neither Toni nor Pierre believe her. Nina is unsure about what to think…
9 ) The Sex Thief (1998)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 6
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 10
- IMDB User Review Score: 1
- Letterboxd User Score: 8
Petra professionally works as a thief abroad to finance the studies of her younger sister Franziska in Germany.
6 ) Jerichow (2008)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 4
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 8
- IMDB User Review Score: 6
- Letterboxd User Score: 5
The Turkish diaspora in Germany proves the catalyst for this noir-flavored drama concerning the unlikely friendship between a veteran of the Afghan-Soviet war and a middle-aged Turk in need of a helping hand.
6 ) The State I Am In (2000)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 6
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 6
- IMDB User Review Score: 6
- Letterboxd User Score: 5
With 1970s Germany in the background, this film depicts the story of a family from the “R.A.F. Terrorist” group and their search for a normal life and their inner self.
6 ) Dreileben: Beats Being Dead (2011)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 6
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 3
- IMDB User Review Score: 6
- Letterboxd User Score: 8
Johannes is a loner who wants a better job. And then he meets Ana. Ana is attractive and even though her job is even less prestigious than Johannes’s, he falls for her. And then she quits her job to be with him (and be dependent on him) and suddenly things become much more serious. She has fallen for him. But does he still love her? Did he ever? Enter Sarah. Sarah is the daughter of Johannes’s boss. He and she have a past. Will Sarah and what she represents be his future, and Ana just a memory, something he’d like to erase?
5 ) Something to Remind Me (2002)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 6
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 10
- IMDB User Review Score: 1
- Letterboxd User Score: 3
Middle-aged lawyer Thomas assists Leyla, an attractive blonde, when she drops her things at the pool. After their paths keep crossing, he picks up the courage to ask her out for a date. Somewhat to his surprise she agrees, but arrives late, just as the restaurant is closing. They go back to his apartment for an impromptu pizza and, after a few drinks, she falls asleep on the couch. The next morning Thomas awakes to find Leyla and his laptop, which contains vital case files, missing… An expertly constructed thriller in the tradition of Hitchcock and Chabrol, writer/director Christian Petzold’s Something To Remind Me keeps the viewer enthralled throughout. — Keith Hennessey Brown, Eye for Film
4 ) Wolfsburg (2003)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 6
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 5
- IMDB User Review Score: 1
- Letterboxd User Score: 5
Philipp Gerber is a smart, but self-satisfied car salesman. In an inattentive moment at the wheel of his car, he runs over a biker and drives away. As he has feelings of guilt, he tries to find out more about the accident’s victim and learns that the boy lies seriously injured in a hospital. Philipp wants to tell his mother Laura Reiser the truth, but he doesn’t. After a carefree holiday with his girlfriend Katja, he learns that the boy is dead. Meanwhile, Laura staggers between grief and the desire for revenge. One evening, she can’t bear it any more and jumps off a bridge, but Philipp saves her life.
3 ) Transit (2018)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 2
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 4
- IMDB User Review Score: 6
- Letterboxd User Score: 2
In an attempt to flee Nazi-occupied France, Georg assumes the identity of a dead author but soon finds himself stuck in Marseilles, where he falls in love with Maria, a young woman searching for her missing husband.
2 ) Barbara (2012)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 3
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 2
- IMDB User Review Score: 5
- Letterboxd User Score: 3
It is the summer of 1980 in East Germany and, alone, Barbara is confined to living and working as a doctor in a small provincial town – her punishment for attempting to emigrate to the West. She has only one focus; to escape and for this, she has to wait patiently. Until Andre, her supervisor in the hospital, takes her off course. Are his motives of love or duty to the authorities? The day-to-day pretense, and content supervision slowly take their toll as the tension builds.
1 ) Phoenix (2014)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 1
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 1
- IMDB User Review Score: 1
- Letterboxd User Score: 1
A disfigured concentration-camp survivor, unrecognizable after facial reconstruction surgery, searches ravaged postwar Berlin for the husband who might have betrayed her to the Nazis.
Christian Petzold’s Best Movies
Christian Petzold Review Website Filmography Rankings
| Film | RT Critic | RT User | IMDB | Letterboxd | Overal Rank |
| Phoenix (2014) | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Barbara (2012) | 3 | 2 | 5 | 3 | 2 |
| Transit (2018) | 2 | 4 | 6 | 2 | 3 |
| Wolfsburg (2003) | 6 | 5 | 1 | 5 | 4 |
| Something to Remind Me (2002) | 6 | 10 | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| Dreileben: Beats Being Dead (2011) | 6 | 3 | 6 | 8 | 6 |
| The State I Am In (2000) | 6 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 6 |
| Jerichow (2008) | 4 | 8 | 6 | 5 | 6 |
| The Sex Thief (1998) | 6 | 10 | 1 | 8 | 9 |
| Ghosts (2005) | 6 | 7 | 11 | 8 | 10 |
| Yella (2007) | 5 | 9 | 12 | 8 | 11 |
| Cuba Libre (1996) | 6 | 10 | 6 | 13 | 12 |
| Drifters (1995) | 6 | 10 | 12 | 8 | 13 |
