Summary

Pabst stays in Berlin long enough to be coached on how to survive the attention of the propaganda ministry. At a café, Helmut Käutner warns him that he is not there to negotiate but to submit, and he drills him on the exact phrases that signal repentance and loyalty. Pabst practices how to address the minister, how to praise the country he fled, and how to present his years abroad as a mistake that must be corrected, even as he hopes to return quietly to the cutting room.

In the minister’s office, Pabst is forced to perform contrition. The minister repeats Pabst’s words and gestures as if testing whether the director has surrendered his dignity, and Pabst understands that the meeting is not a conversation between equals. He accepts the posture of a penitent who must “make amends,” agrees to...