Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
42 Episodes
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.
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1:28:17Episode 1Gods of the Plague
Episode 1
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 ...
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1:25:13Episode 2Love Is Colder Than Death
Episode 2
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...
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1:29:26Episode 3Katzelmacher
Episode 3
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1969 • Germany
The arrival of a Greek immigrant alters the lives of a group of friends in West Germany.
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1:20:03Episode 4The American Soldier
Episode 4
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 ...
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1:44:01Episode 5Beware of a Holy Whore
Episode 5
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...
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1:28:43Episode 6The Merchant of Four Seasons
Episode 6
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1971 • Germany
Starring Hans Hirschmüller, Irm Hermann, Gusti KreisslNew 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...
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2:04:42Episode 7The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
Episode 7
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1972 • West Germany
Starring Margit Carstensen, Hanna Schygulla, Katrin SchaakeIn 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...
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1:45:44Episode 8WORLD ON A WIRE: Part 1
Episode 8
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1973 • Germany
Starring Klaus Löwitsch, Barbara Valentin, Mascha RabbenWORLD 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...
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1:45:45Episode 9WORLD ON A WIRE: Part 2
Episode 9
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1973 • Germany
Starring Klaus Löwitsch, Barbara Valentin, Mascha RabbenWORLD 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...
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1:47:10Episode 10EIGHT HOURS DON’T MAKE A DAY: Episode 1
Episode 10
“Jochen and Marion”
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1972 • GermanyCommissioned 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...
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1:44:48Episode 11EIGHT HOURS DON’T MAKE A DAY: Episode 2
Episode 11
“Grandma and Gregor”
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1972 • GermanyCommissioned 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...
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1:37:14Episode 12EIGHT HOURS DON’T MAKE A DAY: Episode 3
Episode 12
“Franz and Ernst”
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1972 • GermanyCommissioned 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...
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1:34:41Episode 13EIGHT HOURS DON’T MAKE A DAY: Episode 4
Episode 13
“Harald and Monika”
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1972 • GermanyCommissioned 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...
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1:34:05Episode 14EIGHT HOURS DON’T MAKE A DAY: Episode 5
Episode 14
“Irmgard and Rolf”
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1972 • GermanyCommissioned 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...
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1:33:20Episode 15Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
Episode 15
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1974 • West Germany
Starring Brigitte Mira, El Hedi ben Salem, Barbara ValentinThe 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 ...
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2:20:40Episode 16Effi Briest
Episode 16
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.
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Martha
Episode 17
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1974 • West Germany
Starring Margit Carstensen, Karlheinz Böhm, Barbara ValentinOne 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...
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1:28:28Episode 18Fear of Fear
Episode 18
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1975 • West Germany
Starring Margit Cartensen, Ulrich Faulhaber, Brigitte MiraA woman in a stable-but-passionless marriage suddenly begins to lose her mind when she becomes pregnant with her second child.
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2:04:08Episode 19Fox and His Friends
Episode 19
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1975 • West Germany
Starring Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Peter Chatel, Carl BoehmA 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...
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1:57:54Episode 20Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven
Episode 20
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1975 • Germany
Starring Brigitte Mira, Ingrid Caven, Margit CartensenOne of director Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s most provocative (the Berlin Film Festival banned it) variations on the Sirkian melodrama takes subversive, darkly comic aim at the media, polit...
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1:26:11Episode 21Chinese Roulette
Episode 21
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.
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1:51:20Episode 22Satan’s Brew
Episode 22
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.
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2:00:50Episode 23The Marriage of Maria Braun
Episode 23
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1978 • West Germany
Starring Hanna Schygulla, Klaus Löwitsch, Ivan DesnyMaria (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...
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2:05:01Episode 24In a Year of 13 Moons
Episode 24
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1978 • West Germany
Starring Volker Spengler, Ingrid Caven, Gottfried JohnThis 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...
