Movies: Rainer Werner Fassbinder

The life of a married Munich technical draftsman with a son....

Nightclub singer La Paloma succumbs to the persistent courting of a chubby, rich admirer and marries him. Before the marriage, she was thought to be dying, but soon she is well. She believes her husband's love has cured her, but her efforts to love h...

Based on Franz Xaver Kroetz's play, which is in turn based on a true story, this film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder tells the story of a very young girl who, after persuading a local boy to become her lover, induces the anger of her father, whose inces...

A group of young slackers spend most of their time hanging out in front of a Munich apartment building. When a Greek immigrant named Jorgos moves in, however, their aimless lives are shaken up. Soon, new tensions arise both within the group and with ...

The story of a German singer named Willie, who while working in Switzerland, falls in love with a Jewish composer named Robert, whose family is helping people to flee from the Nazis. Robert’s family is skeptical of Willie, thinking she could be a Naz...

During the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, Wim Wenders asked a number of global film directors to, one at a time, go into a hotel room, turn on the camera, and answer a simple question: "What is the future of cinema?"...

After having her second child, a German housewife suffers from postpartum depression before inexplicably falling into a continually misdiagnosed mental state, befuddling her relatives....

"Whity" is the mulatto butler of the dysfunctional Nicholson family in the American Southwest in 1878. The father, Ben Nicholson, has an attractive young wife, Katherine, and two sons by a previous marriage: the homosexual Frank and the feeble-minded...

Wives of rich men have nothing to do because they have staff – like the cook, the maid, the hairdresser, the manicurist, the governess, the teacher, the tailor, etc. – who work for them. Naturally, the wives themselves do not pursue careers; they dep...

A man is released from prison and finds society on the outside less than appealing. With several women as well as the police on his tail, he sets out to find an old friend....

Based on the French play Copain, Clopant. The plot revolves around the gangster Mallard, who wants to blackmail the rising singing star Tony. Tony and his friends, including Christine and her brother Zaza, join forces to hunt down the gangster....

Berlin, 1930, during the rise of Nazism. Hermann Hermann, a Russian emigrant and chocolate manufacturer, married to the capricious Lydia, loses his temper more and more every day when dealing with his workers and other businessmen; until he meets Fel...

When 17-year-old Effi Briest marries the elderly Baron von Instetten, she moves to a small, isolated Baltic town and a house that she fears is haunted. Starved for companionship, Effi begins a friendship with Major Crampas, a charismatic womanizer....

A childish wife reveals surprising strength when faced with blackmail. Based on A Doll's House by Ibsen, this is a video recording made for German television....

Germany in the autumn of 1957: Lola, a seductive cabaret singer-prostitute exults in her power as a temptress of men, but she wants out—she wants money, property, and love. Pitting a corrupt building contractor against the new straight-arrow building...

Maria marries a young soldier in the last days of World War II, only for him to go missing in the war. She must rely on her beauty and ambition to navigate the difficult post-war years alone....

The lackluster and plodding Bolweiser has the (mis)fortune to be married to the town’s siren; his trusting nature leads him into serious trouble when she beds nearly every available guy....

In 1970s Germany, Léopold, a 50-year-old businessman, picks up and seduces 20-year-old Franz, who swiftly moves into his apartment. The dynamic between them intensifies with the sudden arrival of their ex-girlfriends....

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....

An exploration of the cult of the genius, an anti-heroic figure who chooses to be a social outcast and live on the fringe of bourgeois morality....