New German Cinema renegade Rainer Werner Fassbinder lived fast and made films even faster, directing more than forty features, miniseries, and TV movies before his untimely death at age thirty-seven. With both cutting irony and profound empathy, Fassbinder exposed the moral hypocrisy of German society in slashing, Sirkian melodramas like THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT and ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL; subversive period pieces such as the postwar-set THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN and the Weimar-era epic BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ; and taboo-breaking explorations of gay desire including FOX AND HIS FRIENDS and his final film, the delirious Jean Genet adaptation QUERELLE.
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1969 • West Germany
Harry Baer plays a newly released ex-convict who slowly but surely finds his way back into the Munich criminal underworld. Meanwhile, his attentions are torn between two women (Hanna Schygulla and Margarethe von Trotta) and the friend ...
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1969 • West Germany
For his feature debut, Rainer Werner Fassbinder fashioned an acerbic, unorthodox crime drama about a love triangle involving the small-time pimp Franz (Fassbinder), his prostitute girlfriend, Joanna (future Fassbinder mainstay Hanna Schy...
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1969 • Germany
The arrival of a Greek immigrant alters the lives of a group of friends in West Germany.
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1970 • Germany
The German-born American GI Ricky (Karl Scheydt) returns to Munich from Vietnam and is promptly hired as a contract killer. Rainer Werner Fassbinder's experimental noir is a subversive, self-reflexive gangster movie full of unexpected asides ...
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1970 • Germany
In Rainer Werner Fassbinder's brazen depiction of the alternating currents of lethargy and mayhem inherent in moviemaking, a film crew, played by, and not so loosely based on, his own frequent collaborators, deals with an aloof star (Eddie Co...
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1971 • Germany
Starring Hans Hirschmüller, Irm Hermann, Gusti Kreissl
New German Cinema icon Rainer Werner Fassbinder kicked off a new phase of his young career when he made the startling THE MERCHANT OF FOUR SEASONS. In this anguished yet mordantly funny f...
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1972 • West Germany
Starring Margit Carstensen, Hanna Schygulla, Katrin Schaake
In the early 1970s, Rainer Werner Fassbinder discovered the American melodramas of Douglas Sirk and was inspired by them to begin working in a new, more intensely emotional regi...
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1973 • Germany
Starring Klaus Löwitsch, Barbara Valentin, Mascha Rabben
WORLD ON A WIRE is a gloriously paranoid, boundlessly inventive take on the future from German wunderkind Rainer Werner Fassbinder. With dashes of Stanley Kubrick, Kurt Vonnegut, and Ph...
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1973 • Germany
Starring Klaus Löwitsch, Barbara Valentin, Mascha Rabben
WORLD ON A WIRE is a gloriously paranoid, boundlessly inventive take on the future from German wunderkind Rainer Werner Fassbinder. With dashes of Stanley Kubrick, Kurt Vonnegut, and Ph...
“Jochen and Marion”
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1972 • Germany
Commissioned to make a working-class family drama for public television, up-and-coming director Rainer Werner Fassbinder took the assignment and ran, dodging expectations by depicting social realities in West Germany fr...
“Grandma and Gregor”
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1972 • Germany
Commissioned to make a working-class family drama for public television, up-and-coming director Rainer Werner Fassbinder took the assignment and ran, dodging expectations by depicting social realities in West Germany f...
“Franz and Ernst”
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1972 • Germany
Commissioned to make a working-class family drama for public television, up-and-coming director Rainer Werner Fassbinder took the assignment and ran, dodging expectations by depicting social realities in West Germany from...
“Harald and Monika”
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1972 • Germany
Commissioned to make a working-class family drama for public television, up-and-coming director Rainer Werner Fassbinder took the assignment and ran, dodging expectations by depicting social realities in West Germany fr...
“Irmgard and Rolf”
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1972 • Germany
Commissioned to make a working-class family drama for public television, up-and-coming director Rainer Werner Fassbinder took the assignment and ran, dodging expectations by depicting social realities in West Germany fro...
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1974 • West Germany
Starring Brigitte Mira, El Hedi ben Salem, Barbara Valentin
The wildly prolific German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder paid homage to his cinematic hero Douglas Sirk with this update of that filmmaker’s 1955 ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS. A ...
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1974 • West Germany
A young woman is married to a much older man and begins a flirtation with one of his close friends that leads to dire consequences.
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1974 • West Germany
Starring Margit Carstensen, Karlheinz Böhm, Barbara Valentin
One of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s first forays into the classic melodrama style of his hero Douglas Sirk is a brilliantly perverse, operatically stylized portrait of a woman (M...
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1975 • West Germany
Starring Margit Cartensen, Ulrich Faulhaber, Brigitte Mira
A woman in a stable-but-passionless marriage suddenly begins to lose her mind when she becomes pregnant with her second child.
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1975 • West Germany
Starring Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Peter Chatel, Carl Boehm
A lottery win leads not to financial and emotional freedom but to social captivity, in this wildly cynical classic about love and exploitation by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Casti...
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1975 • Germany
After her husband kills his boss and himself, Mother Kusters becomes drawn into the activities of the German Communist party and then a group of anarchists.
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1976 • West Germany
A husband and wife lie to each other about their weekend travel plans, only to both show up at the family's country house with their lovers.
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1976 • Germany
A famous poet who hasn't written a word in two years unconsciously plagarizes the work of Stefan George, he comes to believe he is the reincarnation of the dead writer.
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1978 • West Germany
Starring Hanna Schygulla, Klaus Löwitsch, Ivan Desny
Maria (Hanna Schygulla) marries Hermann Braun in the last days of World War II, only for him to go missing in the war. Alone, Maria puts to use her beauty and ambition in order to find...
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1978 • West Germany
Starring Volker Spengler, Ingrid Caven, Gottfried John
This heartrendingly compassionate tragedy from Rainer Werner Fassbinder traces the final days in the life of Elvira (Volker Spengler), a transgender woman spurned by her former lover...
