Hitchcock’s Vertigo has been invoked repeatedly as a comparison for Christian Petzold’s mesmerizing drama, but while he’s adapting a French novel that has already been turned into a film once before, absolutely nothing here feels second-hand. In 1945 post-war Berlin, wounded Holocaust survivor Nelly (Nina Hoss) undergoes reconstructive surgery that completely changes her face. When Nelly seeks out her husband, Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld), he doesn’t recognize her, instead thinking she’s a stranger who might pass as Nelly just enough to help him collect her family inheritance. Hoss gives a remarkable performance as a woman forced to play-act her own life, while also conveying the ways in which she has changed—particularly a shambling, zombie-like walk—that makes her almost the different person Johnny believes her to be. There’s complexity in every key relationship—including that between Nelly and her caretaker, Lene (Nina Kunzendorf)—that emphasizes how impossible it might be to find a happy ending after so much horror. And Phoenix’s final scene builds to such a devastating revelation that it’s hard to believe anyone would leave thinking of some other movie. By Scott Renshaw