Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Highlighted works

• WHITY

  A black butler in the American South of the 1870s holds a strange erotic power over his masters.

• Martha

  This ruthless dissection of a marriage is like Douglas Sirk on steroids.

• HÄNDLER DER VIER JAHRESZEITEN

  This heart-rending tale was Fassbinder’s first venture into popular melodrama.

• PIONIERE IN INGOLSTADT

  A newly arrived army regiment makes a big impression on the sexually frustrated women of a Bavarian town.

• Die BITTEREN TRÄNEN DER PETRA VON KANT

  A brilliant all-female cast star in this visual and verbal extravaganza about a lonely fashion designer.

• Der AMERIKANISCHE SOLDAT

  Fassbinder’s glorious re-working of Hollywood noir, about a man who becomes a contract killer.

• LIEBE IST KÄLTER ALS DER TOD

  Fassbinder stars in his debut feature as a petty criminal whose desire for freedom is undermined by his emotional needs.

• Satansbraten

  Black comedy about a left-wing poet which skewers the cult of the charismatic artist.

• In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden

  A lonely transsexual journeys through modern Frankfurt in this dark elegy for doomed love.

• Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss

  A young sports journalist meets an ageing movie star in this eerie vision of 1950s Germany.

• Angst vor der Angst

  Overcome by anxiety, a middle-class wife and mother struggles to conform.

• ACHT STUNDEN SIND KEIN TAG

  Fassbinder’s controversial five-part TV soap opera.

• GÖTTER DER PEST

  In this melancholy thriller, capitalism is the ‘plague’ and criminals are its ‘gods’.

• KATZELMACHER

  A Greek immigrant (Fassbinder) unleashes jealousy and xenophobia among a group of his Munich neighbours.

• Bolwieser

  Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s striking adaptation of Oskar Maria Graf’s novel about a small-town Bavarian stationmaster.

• Faustrecht der Freheit

  In this funny and sad tale, Fox wins the lottery and falls in love with ‘posh and prissy’ Eugen.

• FONTANE EFFI BRIEST ODER VIELE, DIE EINE AHNUNG HABEN VON IHREN MÖGLICHKEITEN UND IHREN BEDÜRFNISSEN UND TROTZDEM DAS

  An exquisitely subtle rendition of Fontane’s 1896 novel, about a 17-year-old forced into marriage with an older man.

• WARNUNG VOR EINER HEILIGEN NUTTE

  Awaiting a shoot, the cast and crew of a film outdo one another in displays of professional and sexual rivalry.

• Die NIKLASHAUSER FAHRT

  Fassbinder’s intriguing exploration of the arts of political mass manipulation.

• Mutter Küsters Fahrt zum Himmel

  The wife of a factory worker gone murderously berserk finds herself hounded and exploited.

• Ich will doch nur, daß ihr mich liebt

  Chilling drama based on a real-life interview with a convicted murderer.

• RIO DAS MORTES

  Hanna Schygulla plays a girl who wants to settle down, but her free-wheeling boyfriend has other ideas.

• Chinesisches Roulette

  A bitter young girl brings her emotionally estranged parents together in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s gothic psychodrama.

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  Fear Eats the Soul

  Fassbinder’s international breakthrough is an unconventional love story with devastating emotional power.

• WELT AM DRAHT

  Fassbinder’s two-part TV sci-fi anticipates both Blade Runner and The Matrix.

• Querelle

  Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s adaptation of one of his favourite novels by Jean Genet – a dream-like tale of sex, murder and the quest for self-realisation.

• Lili Marleen

  Set in the Third Reich, this forbidden love story focuses on recording star Willie Bunterberg.

• Lola

  Fantastically vulgar update of The Blue Angel (1930) set in late 1950s West Germany.

• Despair

  Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s first film in English was brilliantly adapted by Tom Stoppard from Vladimir Nabokov’s novel set in 1930s Berlin.

• Theater in Trance

  This immersive documentary captures the 1981 World Theatre Festival in Cologne.

• Die dritte Generation

  Colourful farce centring on a group of bourgeois self-styled terrorists.

• Die Ehe der Maria Braun

  Hanna Schygulla gives a star performance in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film, as a German woman who struggles to rebuild her life after the Second World War.

• WARUM LÄUFT HERR R. AMOK?

  A brilliant black comedy of manners about a man surely at the end of his tether…

• Germany in Autumn

  This portmanteau film was the collective response of leading German filmmakers to the dramatic Baader-Meinhof terrorist crisis of autumn 1977.

• ICH WILL NICHT NUR, DASS IHR MICH LIEBT

  Made 10 years after Fassbinder’s death, this doc investigates his approach to filmmaking through extracts, comments and interviews.

• GOUTTES D'EAU SUR PIERRES BRÛLANTES

  François Ozon’s seductive chamber piece about the destructive affair between a middle-aged businessman and his younger lover.