Alternately tender and haunting, Beats Being Dead is an absorbing portrait of a relationship set against the disquieting backdrop of a police manhunt. Mutual attraction quickly leads to an all-consuming sexual relationship between Johannes, a hospital intern dreaming of studying medicine in Los Angeles, and Ana, a Bosnian immigrant working as a hotel maid. Eventually, their differing backgrounds and ambitions force the outside world to reassert itself. One of the best-known filmmakers of the “Berlin School,” director Christian Petzold was the subject of an HFA retrospective in 2004, and his two most recent features, Yella (2006) and Jerichow (2008), had limited theatrical releases in this country. As in those films, Beats Being Dead reveals the ways class distinctions both fuel and endanger intimate relationships. – DP