<Barbara> is without doubt a masterpiece of Christian Petzold. His works share a distinctive style that the characters communicate their emotions through facial expressions and eye movement rather than dialogues. Barbara also demonstrates the psychology of Barbara who is planning to escape East Germany to West Germany through her face instead of lines exchanged between characters or events. Barbara set a plan to escape from the suffocating society of East Germany to West Germany. The first half of the film is filled with depiction of misery and sense of isolation that she feels living in East Germany. While preparing her escape, she meets Stella, a girl from a youth detention center who was forced to be hospitalized, and falls in love with a colleague doctor Andre. These people make Barbara’s decision changed. What if happiness is not in the land over the border but is what you create with people around you? Petzold does not plainly make his point. Instead, he wants the audience to look at Barbara’s situation in the scenes captured in long shot and hopefully empathize with her. (LEE Sang-yong)