Adopt Films has acquired for release in the U.S., Christian Petzold’s “Barbara,” only hours before it was awarded the Silver Bear for Best Director at the just-concluded 2012 Berlinale (Berlin International Film Festival).

Adopt Films plans to release the film theatrically in December and will mount an Academy Award campaign for Petzold and his lead actors.

Set in East Berlin in 1980 “Barbara” is the riveting and compassionate story of the eponymous pediatric surgeon whose desire to emigrate to the west has banished her to a small country hospital far from freedom, and Andre, a fellow doctor who also finds himself a prisoner of sorts, having recently overseen a procedure which resulted in tragedy for two of his patients.  It is a story of two doctors who, by dint of circumstance, discover feelings of trust they thought were no longer possible on their side of the fence.  It’s about the attraction that ignites between Barbara and Andre, and the improbable bonds that Barbara forms with her patients, often putting herself in jeopardy in the process.

Nina Hoss plays the lead role in “Barbara,” marking her fifth collaboration with writer-director Petzold.  Ronald Zehrfeld, Jasna Fritzi Bauer, Mark Waschke, and Rainer Bock co-star in the film.