Loosely adapted from the 1961 novel Le Retour des Cendres (English: The Return from the Ashes) by French author Hubert Monteilhet, the film stars Nina Hoss and Ronald Zehrfeld as Nelly and Johnny Lenz, respectively.

Phoenix is set in Germany in the aftermath of World War II, where Nelly, a Jewish woman who managed to survive Auschwitz concentration camp, decides to go back to her husband Johnny in Berlin.

Following the end of World War II, Holocaust survivor and former cabaret singer Nelly Lenz returns to Berlin with damage caused by a bullet wound.

Johnny tells Nelly that he plans to stage her "return" from the camps within the week, and invites several of the couple's old friends to meet her with him at the train station.

As Nelly sings, Johnny recognizes her voice and sees the identification number tattooed on her arm when she was a prisoner in the concentration camps.

He stops playing the piano and shows strong feelings of guilt while Nelly finishes the song and walks away.

The film's screenplay is loosely based on Hubert Monteilhet's 1961 French detective novel Le Retour des cendres [fr] (English: The Return from the Ashes), which set the story in France.

In his adaptation, Christian Petzold decided to change the setting to Berlin shortly after the German surrender at the end of World War II.

They also dropped a secondary plot in which Fabienne has developed a relationship with her stepfather, and thus challenges her mother for his affection when identities are ambiguous.

The film features the Kurt Weill/Ogden Nash song "Speak Low" (1943), and Cole Porter's "Night and Day".

The website's critical consensus reads: "Tense, complex, and drenched in atmosphere, Phoenix is a well-acted, smartly crafted war drama that finds writer-director Christian Petzold working at peak power.

"[11] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 89 out of 100, based on 30 reviews from mainstream critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

Club's A.A. Dowd described Phoenix as a "noir psychodrama for the ages", and Nina Hoss as "an actress of old-school glamour and modern nuance".