Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Sukowa - Playful Like A Child

“Acting is something anyone can do,” says Barbara Sukowa. “It’s completely intuitive and instinctual, much like a child dressing up.” Those who have worked with her say that what she does is true artistry. Barbara Sukowa, a star of Fassbinder’s films, an icon, and a role model. Who says there are hardly any interesting roles for women beyond forty? New challenges continually come her way. A few years past normal retirement age, she is launching into a remarkable new chapter. Sukowa – Spielen wie ein Kind (Barbara Sukowa – playful like a child) chronicles the path of an internationally successful actress to this day.

Release Date:2024-10-23

Peter von Kant

Peter von Kant, a successful, famous director, lives with his assistant Karl, whom he likes to mistreat and humiliate. Through the great actress Sidonie, he meets and falls in love with Amir, a handsome young man of modest means. He offers to share his apartment and help Amir break into the world of cinema. Several months later, Amir becomes a star. But as soon as he acquires fame, he breaks up with Peter, leaving him alone to face himself.

Release Date:2022-07-06

Department:Writing

Job:Original Story

Vote Count:95

Wim Wenders, Desperado

"Wings Of Desire" and "Buena Vista Social Club", "Paris, Texas" and "The State Of Things": Wim Wenders is considered one of the pioneers of New German Cinema and one of the most important and influential representatives of contemporary cinema. With never before shown archive material and extraordinary encounters with companions and contemporary witnesses such as Francis Ford Coppola, Willem Dafoe, Andie MacDowell, Hanns Zischler, Patti Smith and Werner Herzog, this documentary provides unique insights into the life and work of one of the most multifaceted artists of our times. Renowned documentary filmmaker Eric Friedler ("It Must Schwing. The Blue Note Story") and his co-director Andreas Frege were given the exclusive opportunity to portray Wenders for this film. From Dusseldorf to Paris, and all the way to the desert of Texas, the film traces iconic locations and decisive moments in Wenders' work as director, producer, photographer and author.

Release Date:2020-07-16

Character:Self (archive footage)

Vote Count:3

Photographer "Eise"

A portion of the Emmy award-winning documentary on the great Life Magazine photojournalist, Alfred Eisenstaedt (Eise). He photographed for over 50 years and was doing well in prewar Germany until he had to leave. This is him returning to Germany in 1982 to experience the country again and see how he felt about the new Germany. In making this film, viewers get a sense of the uniqueness of his character.

Release Date:2019-12-21

Character:Self

Fassbinder

A film portrait of the influential Bavarian actor, director and screenwriter who publicly confessed his homosexuality.

Release Date:2015-04-30

Character:Self (archive footage)

Vote Count:8

Fassbinder: Love Without Demands

Rainer Werner Fassbinder was probably Germany’s most significant post-war director. His swift and dramatic demise at the early age of 37 in 1982 left behind a vacuum in European filmmaking that has yet to be filled, as well as a body of unique, multi-layered and multifarious work of astonishing consistency and rigour. From 1969 onwards, Danish director and film historian Christian Braad Thomsen maintained a close yet respectfully distanced friendship with Fassbinder. Fassbinder – Lieben ohne zu fordern is based on his personal memories as well as a series of conversations and interviews he held with Fassbinder and his mother Lilo in the 1970s.

Release Date:2015-02-07

Character:Self (archive footage)

Vote Count:7

Alfonso Sansone: Producer by Chance

After the war, almost by chance, Alfonso Sansone starts to produce documentary films and moves from Palermo to Rome, the city of film.

Release Date:2014-09-10

Character:Self (archive footage)

Frogman Katzelmacher

The migrant worker Jorgos, joins a group of young people who are usually just hanging around. He incites hostility, jealousy and also curiosity among them. Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s play in a Serbian adaption.

Release Date:2013-11-28

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Garbage, the City and Death

Romi (Gabriela Mícová), a prostitute, is anything but successful at her job: she is of far too gentle a nature for her clients. The more obstinately she is pushed to the streets by her pimp Franz (Stanislav Majer), the closer she is to a complete breakdown. One day Romi is addressed by a property speculator referring to himself as a "wealthy Jew" (Martin Finger). He does not demand any sexual services of her. He satisfies himself with Romi telling him stories, for which he lavishly rewards her. However, no one shares the sudden happiness with Romi. Her work-mates and current clients turn their backs on her, as does Franz, with whom Romi is in love. The whole story takes place in the setting of a dilapidated city, during the clean-up of which politicians openly split their profit with speculators and lobbyists, all under protection from the police.

Release Date:2012-11-21

Department:Writing

Job:Theatre Play

Vote Count:2

Once Upon a Time… The Marriage of Maria Braun

A documentary that focuses on the making of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's "The Marriage of Maria Braun".

Release Date:2012-06-12

Character:Self (archive footage)

My Name Is Not Ali

Travelling between Germany, France and Tunisia, Viola Shafik reconstructs and deconstructs the unknown life story of El Hedi Ben Salem through interviews with his companions and family members as well as archive material. With openness and slight naivety the interviewees explain how “Ali” became an oriental object of projection for the Fassbinder group, while El Hedi Ben Salem, the human being, was overlooked in order to establish the foreigner as “other.” A no-frills examination of a piece of German and Munich film history.

Release Date:2011-11-07

Character:Self (archive footage)

Vote Count:5

Daniel Schmid: Le Chat Qui Pense

When director Daniel Schmid grew up, his parents ran a hotel in the Alps, and this singular setting was to influence his film. Rather by coincidence he came to Berlin in the early 1960s and became part of the new German wave. Schmid worked with, among others, Wenders and Fassbinder, for example as an actor in Wender’s The American Friend. He met Ingrid Caven, who was to play a diva in several of his films. This is a documentation of a part of modern European film history and a good analysis of artistry and how it corresponds to the individual behind the camera. A wealth of archival footage brings us close to many directors and actors in Schmid’s circle. If you’ve never seen a Daniel Schmid film, you are sure to want to after watching this portrait of his life.

Release Date:2010-09-02

Character:Self (archive footage)

Vote Count:4

Counter Shot: Departure of the Filmmakers

Release Date:2008-02-11

Character:Self (archive footage)

Vote Count:2

Back to Room 666

What is the future of cinema? In 1982, in Cannes, Wim Wenders invited many movie makers to answer this question. 26 years later, the question remains, but Wenders is now on the other side of the camera.

Release Date:2008-02-02

Character:Self (archive footage)

Vote Count:2

Atlètic Club Banyoles

The filmmaker Albert Serra and producer Àngel Martin present their last work on the web dedicated to the club Atlètic Club Banyoles and the authentic football.

Release Date:2007-05-01

Character:self

Filmlegenden. Deutsch

Release Date:2006-01-14

Character:Self (archive footage)

Episode Count:2

Vote Count:1

Fassbinder in Hollywood

Though he never actually worked in Hollywood, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who died in 1982 at the age of 36, was influenced greatly by Amercian studio films of the 1950s and the convention of melodrama (the link most often mentioned is Douglas Sirk).

Release Date:2002-07-02

Character:Self (archive footage)

Vote Count:8

Water Drops on Burning Rocks

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.

Release Date:2000-03-15

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Vote Count:117

I Don’t Just Want You to Love Me

A documentary about the life and work of director Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Release Date:1992-06-11

Character:Self (archive footage)

Vote Count:10

Filmarbeit mit Douglas Sirk

Documentary about the shooting of BOURBON STREET BLUES.

Release Date:1987-01-18

Character:Self

The Last Trip to Harrisburg

A soldier and a beautiful blonde on a train to Harrisburg.

Release Date:1984-10-08

Character:Voice of Man and Woman in Train (voice)

Querelle

A handsome Belgian sailor on shore leave in the port of Brest, who is also a drug-smuggler and murderer, embarks upon a voyage of highly charged and violent homosexual self-discovery that will change him forever from the man he once was.

Release Date:1982-09-08

Department:Editing

Job:Editor

Vote Count:175

The Wizard of Babylon

Documentary about German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, during the time of filming "Querelle." Features an interview with Fassbinder only ten hours before his death.

Release Date:1982-08-13

Character:Self

Vote Count:2

Rainer Werner Fassbinder: Last Works

This portrait, drawn by Wolf Gremm, shows Rainer Werner Fassbinder both as an actor - taking the leading role in the film "KAMIKAZE 1989", also directed by Wolf Gremm - and as a director working on "QUERELLE", his adaption of the work by Jean Genet.

Release Date:1982-07-25

Character:Self

Vote Count:3

Kamikaze 1989

In a totalitarian society of the future, in which the government controls all facets of the media, a homicide detective investigates a string of bombings, and finds out more than he bargained for.

Release Date:1982-07-16

Character:Police Lieutenant Jansen

Vote Count:19

Room 666

During the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, Wenders asks 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?"

Release Date:1982-06-01

Character:Self

Vote Count:49

Veronika Voss

In Munich 1955, German film star Veronika Voss becomes a drug addict at the mercy of corrupt Dr. Marianne Katz, who keeps her supplied with morphine. After meeting sports writer Robert Krohn, Veronika begins to dream of a return to stardom. As the couple's relationship escalates in intensity, Veronika begins seriously planning her return to the screen -- only to realize how debilitated she has become through her drug habit.

Release Date:1982-05-13

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Character:Kinobesucher (uncredited)

Vote Count:139

Lola

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 commissioner, Lola launches an outrageous plan to elevate herself in a world where everything, and everyone, is for sale. Shot in childlike candy colors, Fassbinder’s homage to Josef von Sternberg’s classic The Blue Angel stands as a satiric tribute to capitalism.

Release Date:1981-08-20

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:116

Theater in Trance

Rainer Werner Fassbinder visits for two weeks the "Theater der Welt" festival 1981 in Cologne. 30 companies showed in over 100 performances their own visions of a new theater. Framed by Fassbinder's reading of one of the famous essays on theater: Antonin Artaud's "The Theater and its double". The audience is left to wonder how much of Artaud's radical and beautiful vision is realized in contemporary theater.

Release Date:1981-08-20

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:5

Polnischer Sommer

Release Date:1981-07-09

Character:Babiuch

Cinémania : Rainer Werner Fassbinder

A documentary about the Director Fassbinder but edited as if it was a film of the Master himself, with some sequences of his own movies.

Release Date:1981-04-27

Character:Self

Vote Count:1

Lili Marleen

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 Nazi as she becomes famous for singing the song “Lili Marleen”.

Release Date:1981-01-14

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Character:Günther Weissenborn (uncredited)

Vote Count:76

Berlin Alexanderplatz

In late 1920s Berlin, Franz Biberkopf is released from prison and vows to go straight. However, he soon finds himself embroiled in the city’s criminal underworld.

Release Date:1980-10-12

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Character:uncredited

Episode Count:14

Vote Count:38

Douglas Sirk: Über Stars

Douglas speaks about some of the stars he has directed like Asta Nielsen, Lili Dagover, Zarah Leander, George Sanders, Signe Hasso, Barbara Stanwyck, Jane Wyman and many others.

Release Date:1980-04-29

Character:Self

Notes on the Making of 'Berlin Alexanderplatz'

Documentary about the making of the 1980 German television series.

Release Date:1980-01-01

Character:Self

Vote Count:3

The Third Generation

A wildly anarchic satire of guerrilla terrorism in which a band of leftist radicals inadvertently become puppets of the West German government, which uses them to justify its authoritarian policies.

Release Date:1979-05-30

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:44

The Marriage of Maria Braun

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.

Release Date:1979-03-23

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Character:Peddler

Vote Count:252

Bourbon Street Blues

An adaptation of Tennessee Williams' "The Lady Larkspur Lotion" created by Douglas Sirk with the assistance of his film students and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. It depicts the conflict between a dreamy, delusional heroine and her brusque, practical landlady, who wants to kick her out of her apartment.

Release Date:1979-02-22

Character:Writer

Vote Count:7

NDR Talk Show

Release Date:1979-02-09

Character:Self

Episode Count:1

Vote Count:4

In a Year with 13 Moons

Elvira Weishaupt, once a burly working-class butcher, has made an enormous sacrifice for love. She has undergone a sex change for a romantic interest who has abandoned her, and she now must struggle to reconcile her past life with her present identity.

Release Date:1978-11-17

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:81

Spiel der Verlierer

Release Date:1978-10-12

Department:Production

Job:Producer

Despair

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 Felix, a vagrant, who seems to be physically identical to him; a disconcerting fact that leads Hermann Hermann to plot a particular way out of a fake world he actually hates.

Release Date:1978-09-20

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:42

Life Stories: A Conversation with RW Fassbinder

This is a 45 minute interview with RWF in the kitchen in a house he had rented close to Paris at that time. Four years before his untimely death the interview shows a quite relaxed and patient Fassbinder who answers all kinds of (often contrafactual or at least uninformed) questions and reveals quite a lot about his childhood and current personal drama. Sober, chainsmoking but very lightheaded RWF.

Release Date:1978-07-18

Character:Self

Little Godard

The production of a film requires recording equipment and financial resources if nothing else. Hellmuth Costard places these basic prerequisites at the centre of his film: using a Super 8 camera system he developed, he films himself as he tries to raise funding for his film project. This creates an unconventional experimental setup, which reveals how the economics, politics, technology and aesthetics of filmmaking relate to each other – with the ‘great’ Godard being called up as a kind of chief witness.

Release Date:1978-06-08

Character:Second Director

Germany in Autumn

Germany in Autumn does not have a plot per se; it mixes documentary footage, along with standard movie scenes, to give the audience the mood of Germany during the late 1970s. The movie covers the two month time period during 1977 when a businessman was kidnapped, and later murdered, by the left-wing terrorists known as the RAF-Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Fraction). The businessman had been kidnapped in an effort to secure the release of the orginal leaders of the RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang. When the kidnapping effort and a plane hijacking effort failed, the three most prominent leaders of the RAF, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe, all committed suicide in prison. It has become an article of faith within the left-wing community that these three were actually murdered by the state.

Release Date:1978-03-03

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Character:Self (uncredited)

Vote Count:27

Lebensläufe

Release Date:1978-01-21

Character:Self

Episode Count:1

The Stationmaster’s Wife

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.

Release Date:1977-07-31

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:10

Women in New York

The main characters in this film are wives of rich men who 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 depend on their husbands’ money. This is why most of their thoughts revolve around the husband. And because the husband only appears as “the” man, there is no man in this film. All women fight for the same man. Those who have one, want to keep him no matter what. And those who do not have one yet only have one goal: To take away somebody else’s husband.

Release Date:1977-06-21

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:3

Adolf and Marlene

When Hitler watches Marlene Dietrich in a movie, he falls in love with her. He persuades her to come back to Germany to be with him, but upon her arrival she constantly insults and provokes him until he eventually, on her command, bites the carpet to bits.

Release Date:1977-03-15

Department:Production

Job:Producer

Vote Count:2

Chinese Roulette

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.

Release Date:1977-02-23

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:86

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1977

Rainer Werner Fassbinder reflects on the various stages of his career, discusses how his motives behind filmmaking evolved up his film Despair.

Release Date:1977-01-01

Character:Self

Vote Count:6

Signs of Vigorous Life: The New German Cinema

BBC documentary about the rise of the New German Cinema and several of its most important figures.

Release Date:1976-12-02

Character:Self

Satan’s Brew

A famous poet who hasn't written a word in two years unconsciously plagiarizes the work of Stefan George, while dealing with several mistresses, his dim-witted brother, and a murder investigation.

Release Date:1976-10-07

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:29

Shadow of Angels

Beautiful, detached, laconic, consumptive Lily Brest is a streetwalker with few clients. She loves her idle boyfriend Raoul who gambles away what little she earns. The town's power broker, called the rich Jew, discovers she is a good listener, so she's soon busy. Raoul imagines grotesque sex scenes between Lily and the Jew; he leaves her for a man. Her parents, a bitter Fascist who is a cabaret singer in drag and her wheelchair-bound mother, offer no refuge. Even though all have a philosophical bent, the other whores reject Lily because she tolerates everyone, including men. She tires of her lonely life and looks for a way out. Even that act serves the local corrupt powers.

Release Date:1976-09-03

Department:Writing

Job:Theatre Play

Character:Raoul

Vote Count:7

I Only Want You to Love Me

Peter grew up during the economic miracle, bereft of parental care and love. Learning early on that interpersonal relationships are based on the principles of exchange or purchase, he abides by these rules and gives generous presents to his family and his wife Erika. But when he is unable to keep up this lifestyle, his story takes a horrendous turn...

Release Date:1976-03-23

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:25

The Culture Industry Needs Something Like Me

Release Date:1976-01-01

Character:Self (also interviewee) (uncredited)

Fear of Fear

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

Release Date:1975-07-08

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:23

Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven

After a worker kills a superior and commits suicide, each of his family members attempts to forge a path forward in life.

Release Date:1975-07-01

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:27

Fox and His Friends

Fox, a former circus performer, wins the lottery of DM 500,000 and can now have the life and things that he has always wanted. While he wants to climb up the social ladder, it isn't without turmoil, and being torn between his old working class roots, and the shiny new facade of middle class consciousness.

Release Date:1975-06-06

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Character:Franz "Fox" Bieberkopf

Vote Count:127

Die Wohngenossin

Release Date:1975-05-29

Vote Count:1

Like a Bird on a Wire

A pseudo variety show about the Aufbau-Era, the time of the German 'economic miracle'. Brigitte Mira recounts her four husbands through song and joke, on an series of artificial sets.

Release Date:1975-05-05

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:6

Auf dem Trümmerfeld der Träume

Documenatry about the films of Douglas Sirk.

Release Date:1975-01-01

Character:Self

Spécial cinéma

Release Date:1974-09-25

Character:Self

Episode Count:1

La Paloma

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 him begin to fade as she discovers true love with her husband's old school friend.

Release Date:1974-08-28

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Vote Count:6

Effi Briest

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.

Release Date:1974-06-20

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Character:Narrator (voice) (uncredited)

Vote Count:45

Martha

After the death of her abusive father, lonely librarian Martha finds herself caught up in a strange, sadomasochistic relationship with a monstrous husband whom she begins to suspect may be trying to murder her.

Release Date:1974-05-28

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:60

Am laufenden Band

Release Date:1974-04-27

Character:Self - Guest

Episode Count:1

Vote Count:2

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

Emmi Kurowski, a cleaning lady, is lonely in her old age. Her husband died years ago, and her grown children offer little companionship. One night she goes to a bar frequented by Arab immigrants and strikes up a friendship with middle-aged mechanic Ali. Their relationship soon develops into something more, and Emmi's family and neighbors criticize their spontaneous marriage. Soon Emmi and Ali are forced to confront their own insecurities about their future.

Release Date:1974-03-05

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Character:Eugen

Vote Count:407

Nora Helmer

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.

Release Date:1974-02-03

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:6

1 Berlin-Harlem

An African-American GI retires from the US Army in West Berlin to live with his (white) girlfriend, who already has a baby with another black man. After an argument with her family, she deserts him as well. Despite finding a job and a new place to live, he keeps running into racism, which also manifests itself in sexual intimidation.

Release Date:1974-01-01

Character:Self

Vote Count:2

World on a Wire

Cybernetics engineer Fred Stiller uncovers a massive corporate conspiracy involving a virtual reality computer project.

Release Date:1973-10-14

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Episode Count:2

Vote Count:58

Tenderness of the Wolves

A German serial killer preys on boys and young men during the so-called years of crisis between the wars. Based on the true story of Fritz Haarmann, aka the Butcher of Hanover and the Vampire of Hanover.

Release Date:1973-07-12

Department:Production

Job:Producer

Character:Wittowski

Vote Count:43

Je später der Abend

Release Date:1973-03-18

Character:Self

Episode Count:1

Jail Bait

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 incestuous sexual attentions to her have grown unbearable.

Release Date:1973-01-09

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Vote Count:11

Bremen Freedom

A very stylized TV version of the Fassbinder play. The set consists of a few pieces of furniture in front of a large screen on which coastal scenery is back projected. Geesche is a nineteenth century woman who wants to have a mind of her own. She defies convention and will do anything to achieve her freedom from oppression by her family and friends. (synopsis written by Will Gilbert)

Release Date:1972-11-12

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Character:Rumpf

Vote Count:5

Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day

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 a critical—yet far from cynical—perspective. Over the course of five episodes, the sprawling story tracks the everyday triumphs and travails of the young toolmaker Jochen and many of the people populating his world, including the woman he loves, his eccentric family, and his fellow workers, with whom he bands together to improve conditions on the factory floor.

Release Date:1972-10-29

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Episode Count:5

Vote Count:18

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant

Petra von Kant is a successful fashion designer -- arrogant, caustic, and self-satisfied. She mistreats Marlene (her secretary, maid, and co-designer). Enter Karin, a 23-year-old beauty who wants to be a model. Petra falls in love with Karin and invites her to move in.

Release Date:1972-10-05

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:210

The Merchant of Four Seasons

Hans is a street fruit peddler and born-loser. His choice of career upsets his bourgeois family, causing him to turn to drinking and violence. After recovering from a debilitating heart attack, his business finally begins to take off. However the more he becomes a credit to his family, the more depressed he becomes.

Release Date:1972-03-10

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Character:Zucker

Vote Count:70

The Ancestress

Release Date:1971-12-20

Character:Jaromir

Beware of a Holy Whore

Tensions between members of a film crew build while they wait for the arrival of the director and star to arrive on location.

Release Date:1971-09-01

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Character:Sascha

Vote Count:54

Whity

"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 retarded Davy. Whity tries to carry out all their orders, however demeaning, until various of the family members ask him to kill some of the others.

Release Date:1971-06-02

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Character:Saloon guest (uncredited)

Vote Count:18

Mathias Kneißl

Inspired by the real life events of Mathias Kneißl, a marginal man, son of poor farmers from Bavaria, in the late XIX Century. Mathias stole from the riches to give to the poor, becoming a hero for the rural people, and a popular social rebel. He was chased by the police until his unfortunate sentence.

Release Date:1971-05-27

Character:Flecklbauer

Vote Count:1

Pioneers in Ingolstadt

Berta, a naive young maid, searches for love when the army engineers come to town to build a bridge.

Release Date:1971-05-19

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:12

Supergirl

In this comedy, Iris Berben plays a mysterious, supernaturally beautiful girl from another planet, who confuses and flusters the men on earth, where she has landed. The men follow her wherever she goes. Marquard Bohm is no exception here - he leaves his wife in a lurch and travels with the Supergirl to Spain. The girl doesn't tell much about herself; she reports, though, about an impending threat from outer space.

Release Date:1971-05-14

Character:Man in Front of Shop Window

Vote Count:7

Dalli Dalli

Release Date:1971-05-13

Character:Self

Episode Count:1

Vote Count:1

The Sudden Wealth of the Poor People of Kombach

An intriguing Hans Christian Anderson-style fairy tale aesthetic and voice over narration. Sudden Wealth is a despairing chronicle of a group of starving peasants who finally seize governmental wealth like a dysfunctional group of Robin Hood's Merry Men, only to be betrayed by their inescapable selves and systematically dehumanized (think bucolic Orwell) and reprogrammed by what we'll put under the rubric of God and Country.

Release Date:1971-04-14

Character:Bauer

Vote Count:15

Rio das Mortes

Michel and Guenther, working in dead-end jobs, are obsessed with going to Peru to find buried treasure, using a map of the Rio das Mortes. Michel's girlfriend, Hanna, humors their plan, but really just wants to get married.

Release Date:1971-02-15

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Character:Hannas Tanzpartner (uncredited)

Vote Count:14

Fassbinder Produces: Film No. 8

About the making of "Der amerikanische Soldat/The American Soldier" in 1970.

Release Date:1971-01-27

Character:Self

Haytabo

A biochemistry professor finds an old manuscript with structure and formula of immortality drug.

Release Date:1971-01-01

Character:Bote des Professors

Vote Count:4

The Niklashausen Journey

Can a small group of people start a proletarian revolution, asks the "Black Monk" in a leather jacket. The medieval shepherd, Hans Boehm, claims to have been called by the Virgin Mary to create a revolt against the church and the landowners. The "Black Monk" suggests that he would have more success if he dressed up Johanna and had her appear as the Virgin Mary.

Release Date:1970-10-26

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Character:Schwarzer Mönch

Vote Count:7

The American Soldier

Ricky returns to Munich from Vietnam and is promptly hired as a contract killer.

Release Date:1970-10-09

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Character:Franz Walsch (uncredited)

Vote Count:19

Gods of the Plague

A man is released from prison and finds the 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.

Release Date:1970-07-24

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Character:Pornokunde

Vote Count:26

Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?

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

Release Date:1970-06-28

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:87

End of the Commune?

"End of the Commune"/"Ende einer kommune" is a great 49 min. long movie made in 1969 about Fassbinder and the early years of the legendary Antiteater he was a member/leader of. You can here see and hear some of the actors he was going to use in his movies for the next years. The movie shows rehearsals for his play "The Coffehouse" which also became a television-movie, and you can watch unique footage from the 19th Film-Festival in Berlin (1969) where "Love is Colder Than Death" were shown. As told in this documentary, his first feature-movie were given a cold shoulder by many of the journalists and visitors at the festival. You can in "End of the Commune" watch Fassbinder and actor Ulli Lommel walk out on stage after the opening of "Love is Colder than Death", while a man in the audience is shouting "Out with the director!". In this interesting documentary Fassbinder also talks a lot about his father which was a respectable doctor.

Release Date:1970-06-05

Character:Self (uncredited)

The Coffee House

Avant-garde adaptation of a Carlo Goldoni play. Well-to-do Venetians congregate in a coffee house and discuss their problems.

Release Date:1970-05-18

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:3

Love Is Colder Than Death

Small-time pimp Franz is torn between his mistress and Bruno, the gangster sent after him by a shady crime syndicate he's refused to join.

Release Date:1970-01-16

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Character:Franz

Vote Count:53

Baal

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

Release Date:1970-01-07

Character:Baal

Vote Count:16

Al Capone im deutschen Wald

Release Date:1969-10-22

Character:Heini

Katzelmacher

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 Jorgos.

Release Date:1969-10-07

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Character:Jorgos

Vote Count:50

Frei bis zum nächsten Mal

Release Date:1969-07-22

Character:Mechaniker

Tonys Freunde

Release Date:1969-07-09

Character:Mallard

The Bridegroom, the Actress, and the Pimp

Three sequences are linked together in this short film by Straub; the first sequence is a long tracking shot from a car of prostitutes plying their trade on the night-time streets of Germany; the second is a staged play, cut down to 10 minutes by Straub and photographed in a single take; the final sequence covers the marriage of James and Lilith, and Lilith’s subsequent execution of her pimp, played by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. "The film is a look entirely at Western decadence" - Jean-Marie Straub.

Release Date:1968-10-10

Character:the pimp

Vote Count:12

Mit Eichenlaub und Feigenblatt

A young man named Jürgen joins the military. As much as he tries to make a heroic career as a soldier in a rearmed West Germany, he fails utterly and ends up in a bizarre sanatorium.

Release Date:1968-01-05

Character:Soldier

Vote Count:1

The Little Chaos

Theo, Marite, and Franz cannot make any money selling magazines door to door, so they try a little robbery.

Release Date:1966-12-02

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Character:Franz

Vote Count:28

This Night

The first R.W. Fassbinder film project. 8 mm color. Considered lost.

Release Date:1966-06-05

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Ein Platz für Günter

Short duco about Günter, who is handicapped.

Release Date:1966-01-01

Department:Directing

Job:Assistant Director

The City Tramp

A tramp finds a gun lying in the street.

Release Date:1966-01-01

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Character:Man #1 on Toilet

Vote Count:24

aspekte

Release Date:1965-10-17

Character:Self

Episode Count:1

Vote Count:1

Grimme-Preis-Verleihung

Release Date:1964-01-16

Character:Self

Episode Count:1

Stars in der Manege

Release Date:1959-04-11

Character:Self

Episode Count:1

Vote Count:3

Deutscher Filmpreis

Release Date:1951-01-01

Character:Self

Episode Count:1

Vote Count:1