Fassbinder and His Friends

Fassbinder and His Friends

2 Episodes

Thirty years after its release, the powerful, antiracist themes of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Sirkian masterpiece ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL continue to resonate in an at once hard-hitting and poetic short. Shot with striking immediacy by a subjective camera, Shahbaz Noshir’s ANGST ISST SEELE AUF assumes the point of view of a black actor in Germany dealing with racist abuse as he prepares to appear in a play based on Fassbinder’s film, about the taboo relationship between an older German woman and an Arab man. Sharing the same lead actress (Brigitte Mira), cinematographer (Jürgen Jürges), and editor (Thea Eymèsz), these twin works offer a searing indictment of prejudice within German society.

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Fassbinder and His Friends
  • Angst isst Seele auf

    Episode 1

    Directed by Shahbaz Noshir • 2002 • Germany

    Director Shahbaz Noshir’s 2002 film about an encounter with prejudice is titled ANGST ISST SEELE AUF (FEAR EATS THE SOUL), a grammatically correct version of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1974 film ANGST ESSEN SEELE AUF (FEAR EAT SOUL). It has the same le...

  • Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

    Episode 2

    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 ...