Adapted from Anna Seghers' WWII-set novel, Transit transposes the plot to an indistinct era that resembles the present-day. Georg (Franz Rogowski) is a German refugee who escapes to Marseille, a port for migrants fleeing an unspecified war. He carries the documents of a famous writer, Weidl: a manuscript, the promise of an elusive transit pass from the Mexican embassy, and letters from the writer's wife, Marie (Paula Beer). Discovering that Weidl has taken his own life, Georg assumes the author's identity, grows ambivalent about leaving the continent, and develops an obsessive desire for the mysterious Marie — herself stranded in the city. 

Transit, evoking shades of Hitchcock and Casablanca, is an unlikely, wrenching love story as much as a sly, unsettling thriller and — like much of director Christian Petzold's oeuvre — a film about ghosts, memory, and historical trauma.