Leaving December 1

Directed by Angela Schanelec | 105 mins | 2023
Winner of the 2023 Berlinale Best Screenplay prize, Angela Schanelec’s oblique but vivid film transposes “Oedipus Rex” to contemporary Greece—though Sophocles’ tragedy is here distilled beyond easy recognition, with the rigor characteristic of the quietly formally radical Berlin School auteur. Jon (Aliocha Schneider) meets Iro (Agathe Bonitzer) in prison: he is a prisoner and she, a guard; both are lovers of classical music. On his release, they begin a romance—oblivious to the overlap between their traumas.