Rainer Werner Fassbinder Filmography

Water Drops On Burning Rocks

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Bernard Giraudeau, Malik Zidi, Ludivine Sagnier, Anna Thomson

Synopsis: French bad boy director Francois Ozon follows up on his controversial first two films Sitcom (1998) and Criminal Lovers (1999) with this adaptation of a play that legendary German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder wrote when he was 19 years old. Retaining the play's four-act structure, the first Read More

Life, Love & Celluloid

Crew: Featured Music

Synopsis: Juliane Lorenz wrote and directed this 97-minute German documentary study of German film/theater director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who was 37 when he died in 1982 after creating 43 feature films. Interview subjects offering comments on Fassbinder's life and career include Geoffrey Gilmore Read More

Ich Will Nicht Nur, Dass Ihr Mich Liebt

Actors: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Hanna Schygulla, Karl Heinz Böhm, Ingrid Caven, Andréa Ferréol

Synopsis: The title of this documentary on Rainer Maria Fassbinder is just slightly changed from the title of a film that director made in 1976, entitled Ich Will Doch Nur, Dass Ihr Mich Liebt (I Only Want You to Love Me). The wunderkind of postwar German filmmaking died at age 36 in 1982 after making over Read More

Room 666

Actors: Jean-Luc Godard, Steven Spielberg, Michelangelo Antonioni, Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Synopsis: In this unusual documentary based on a series of identical questions addressed to world-famous directors such as Werner Herzog, Steven Spielberg, and Jean-Luc Godard, director Wim Wenders placed each of his colleagues one-by-one in a single room, gave them one reel (11 minutes) of time to look Read More

Kamikaze '89

Actors: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Günther Kaufmann, Boy Gobert, Arnold Marquis, Richy Mueller

Synopsis: Famed filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder stars as a futuristic cop who must sniff out a bomb stashed somewhere in a 30-story Berlin office building. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide Read More

Veronika Voss

Crew: Director, Executive Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Rosel Zech, Hilmar Thate, Annemarie Düringer, Doris Schade, Cornelia Froboess

Synopsis: Originally Die Sehnsucht de Veronika Voss, this Rainer Werner Fassbinder spin on Sunset Boulevard stars Rosel Zech as film actress Veronika Voss. Once the toast of Germany, Veronika had allegedly been an intimate of Joseph Gobbels. But the Third Reich is dead...and Veronika may as well be. Playing Read More

The Wizard of Babylon

Actors: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Jeanne Moreau, Brad Davis, Franco Nero

Synopsis: German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder died of a drug overdose on June 10, 1982, before his last film, Querelle was edited. This documentary is both about the filming of Querelle -- a sailor of that name whose love life left nothing to be desired -- and about director Fassbinder's working Read More

Querelle

Crew: Director, Editor, Screenwriter

Actors: Brad Davis, Franco Nero, Jeanne Moreau, Laurent Malet, Hanno Pöschl

Synopsis: A sailor learns to take, and give, it like a man in this surrealistic adaptation of writer and thief Jean Genet's novel Querelle de Brest by avant-garde German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. In a colorful brothel in the port of Brest, proprietor Nono (Gunther Kaufmann) is known for wagering Read More

Theater in Trance

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Lola

Crew: Director, Executive Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Barbara Sukowa, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Mario Adorf, Matthias Fuchs, Helga Feddersen

Synopsis: Part of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Entire History of the German Federal Republic trilogy, Lola stars Barbara Sukowa in the title role, a seductive cabaret singer and dancer in the 1950s who is romantically involved with Von Bohm (Armin Mueller-Stahl), a straight-as-an-arrow building inspector. Read More

Lili Marleen

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Hanna Schygulla, Giancarlo Giannini, Mel Ferrer, Karl-Heinz von Hassel, Christine Kaufmann

Synopsis: German cabaret star Lili Marleen inspired a song that was extremely popular with the German soldiers during WW II. This war drama offers a fictionalized account of her story that begins in 1938 while she performs in a Zurich cabaret. It is her boyfriend, a Swiss Jew who also turns out to be a Read More

Berlin Alexanderplatz

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Günter Lamprecht, Hanna Schygulla, Franz Buchrieser, Gottfried John, Barbara Sukowa

Synopsis: Rainer Werner Fassbinder's sweeping 16-hour-long drama Berlin Alexanderplatz is an adaptation of the novel by Alfred Doblin. Franz Biberkopf (Günter Lamprecht) is released from prison as the film opens; he had been jailed for four years after killing his girlfriend Ida. Franz becomes involved with Read More

Die Dritte Generation

Crew: Cinematographer, Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Margit Carstensen, Eddie Constantine, Hanna Schygulla, Volker Spengler

Synopsis: German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder both directed and photographed The Third Generation (Die Dritte Generation). Displaying a sense of humor that can most kindly be described as perverse, Fassbinder follows the exploits of a group of well-heeled German terrorists. Without truly taking sides Read More

The Marriage of Maria Braun

Crew: Director, Editor, Screenwriter

Actors: Hanna Schygulla, Klaus Löwitsch, Ivan Desny, Gottfried John, Gisela Uhlen, Günter Lamprecht, Hark Bohm

Synopsis: The film that elevated German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder from domestic approbation to international acclaim, The Marriage of Maria Braun stars the director's on-and-off favorite actress Hanna Schygulla in the title role. During the allied siege of Germany in the last year of the war Read More

In a Year With 13 Moons

Crew: Art Director, Cinematographer, Director, Editor, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Volker Spengler, Ingrid Caven, Gottfried John, Elisabeth Trissenaar, Eva Mattes

Synopsis: This Rainer Werner Fassbinder drama centers around the lonely quest for love of Elvira Weishaupt, a man who became a woman to please his/her man. Just prior to that, Elivira had been jilted by her previous live-in partner, a man. She does the operation to win the heart of another, Anton. Read More

Deutschland im Herbst

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Caroline Chaniolleau, Lisi Mangold

Synopsis: This provocative film anthology contains nine short fiction and documentary films believed to have had great influence on the development of New German Cinema. Each of the five was directed by a different German filmmaker and are set during the politically tempestuous summer of 1977 in West Read More

Despair

Crew: Director

Actors: Dirk Bogarde, Andréa Ferréol, Volker Spengler, Klaus Löwitsch

Synopsis: Having made as many films as he had years, at 31, Rainer Werner Fassbinder essayed a slightly different approach for his 32nd film, Despair. Here, he uses a witty screenplay written by the well-known playwright Tom Stoppard, based on a novel by Vladimir Nabokov. Furthermore, the entire film, set Read More

Frauen in New York

Crew: Director

Satan's Brew

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Kurt Raab, Helen Vita, Margit Carstensen, Volker Spengler, Ingrid Caven

Synopsis: This fast-paced black comedy by wunderkind director Rainer Werner Fassbinder follows the frantic efforts of a starving and confused writer, Walter Kranz (Kurt Raab) to beg, borrow or steal enough money to survive on, and at the same time make some sense of his confusing life. Unable to write Read More

Fear of Fear

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Margit Carstensen, Ulrich Faulhaber, Brigitte Mira, Irm Hermann, Armin Meier

Synopsis: A housewife's slow descent into suicidal depression is chronicled in great detail in this movie by experimental film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide Read More

Ich Will Doch Nur, Dass Ihr Mich Liebt

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Rainer Werner Fassbinder directs this bleak morality tale about a young Bavarian bricklayer who longs for love. Raised in a rigid, remote household and married to an emotionally distant woman, everyone in his life seems indifferent to his suffering. His life takes a further unfortunate turn when Read More

Der Kleine Godard an Das Kuratorium Junger Deutscher Film

Actors: Jean-Luc Godard, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Hark Bohm

Synopsis: Politics within the community of small and independent German filmmakers is the subject of this wry spoof. It chronicles the meetings of an organization which resembles in every way the Kuratorium for Young German Cinema, or the German government board which hands out grants to budding filmmakers. Read More

Schatten Der Engel

Crew: Play Author, Screenwriter

Actors: Ingrid Caven, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Klaus Löwitsch, Annemarie Düringer, Adrian Hoven

Synopsis: The anguish and suffering of a trio of outcasts is shown in this movie, based on Schatten der Engel Rainer Werner Fassbinder's controversial and possibly anti-Semitic stage play. A prostitute (Ingrid Craven) with a gift for eliciting confidences from her clients, her pimp (Fassbinder), and one of Read More

Chinese Roulette

Crew: Director, Editor, Screenwriter

Actors: Margit Carstensen, Ulli Lommel, Anna Karina, Alexander Allerson, Andrea Schober

Synopsis: Angela is the crippled daughter of two separated but still-feuding parents. In this Rainer Werner Fassbinder film, the wealthy parents are both induced to come to their country vacation house with their lovers in tow. For years, they have tried to make Angela feel guilty for having driven them to Read More

The Stationmaster's Wife

Crew: Director

Actors: Kurt Raab, Elisabeth Trissenaar, Gustav Bayrhammer, Bernhard Helfrich, Udo Kier

Synopsis: This drama is set in Bavaria prior to Hitler's rise to power and chronicles the many affairs of a stationmaster's bored wife. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven

Crew: Director, Screen Story, Screenwriter

Synopsis: Mother Kusters (Brigette Kira) is the wife of a factory worker who goes beserk one day, killing himself and the boss' son. Mother finds herself a media celebrity, which only serves to make herself and her late husband look like idiots. Later, Mother is "adopted" by a Communist couple who wish to Read More

Fox and His Friends

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Peter Chatel, Harry Baer, Adrian Hoven

Synopsis: Faustrecht der Freiheit (Fox and His Friends) was one of the many films in the short, but prolific, career of German auteur Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Fassbinder plays Franz Biberkopf, a financially poor gay man who performs in a traveling circus as Fox the Talking Head. One day, he lucks into Read More

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Brigitte Mira, El Hedi Ben Salem, Barbara Valentin, Irm Hermann, Peter Gauhe

Synopsis: Rainer Werner Fassbinder not only directed Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Angst essen Seele auf), but also scripted the film, designed the sets, and produced. Brigitte Mira heads the cast as a lonely German cleaning woman, who enters into an affair with equally lonely--and much, much younger--Moroccan Read More

Effi Briest

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Synopsis: Rainer Werner Fassbinder's adaptation of a late 19th-century novel by Theodor Fontane is an austere period piece that may be the least characteristic of the German director's films. The titular heroine, played by Fassbinder regular Hanna Schygulla, is a 17-year-old girl forced into a loveless Read More

Wie Ein Vogel Auf Dem Draht

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Nora Helmer

Crew: Director

Welt Am Draht

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

The Tenderness of the Wolves

Actors: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Kurt Raab

Synopsis: This dark horror film from director Ulli Lommel was based on the real-life crimes of Fritz Haarman (Kurt Raab), the so-called "Vampire of Dusseldorf" who murdered over 25 young boys, drank their blood, and sold their flesh as black-market meat. Several German films had depicted Haarman's murderous Read More

Martha

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: Martha is a wealthy and totally self-involved woman -- so much so that on a trip during which her father dies, she does indeed cry, but only because she lost her purse. She marries a stranger who claims not to be at all attracted to her, and their wedding is only the beginning of a battle between Read More

Wildwechsel

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: 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 lad to kill her father, whose incestuous sexual attentions to her have grown Read More

The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Margit Carstensen, Hanna Schygulla

Synopsis: This tale of intermingled love and hate is directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and is the 13th of the 33 films he made in his short life. It explores the universal dynamics present in close human relationships, even lesbian ones. Petra Von Kant (Margit Carstensen) is a fashion designer. Some Read More

Bremer Freiheit

Crew: Director

Pioneers in Ingolstadt

Crew: Director

Actors: Irm Hermann, Hanna Schygulla

Synopsis: German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder directs the made-for-TV melodrama Pioneers in Ingolstadt, based on the play by Marieluise Fleisser. The film opens as a parade of soldiers are marching through a town square singing patriotic songs. Alma (Irm Hermann) and Berta (Hanna Schygulla) are Read More

Rio das Mortes

Crew: Director

Actors: Günther Kaufmann, Michael König, Hanna Schygulla

Synopsis: Aimlessness and misplaced ambition take two friends in unexpected directions in this made-for-TV drama directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Michel (Michael Konig) and Gunther (Gunther Kauffmann) are two friends who feel trapped in Germany and are trying to decide what to do with their lives; Read More

Der Plotzliche Reichtum der Armen Leute von Kombach

Synopsis: Village life in the 1820s, whether in Germany or France, was much the same as it was in the Middle Ages. The peasantry was seen as a cash-cow for the landowning aristocracy, or for the government, according to circumstances. Their lot was extremely difficult, for they were heavily taxed and were Read More

Pioniere in Ingolstadt

Crew: Director

Mathias Kneissl

The Merchant of Four Seasons

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Hans Hirschmuller, Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Synopsis: Der Händler der vier Jahreszeiten (The Merchant of Four Seasons) is about the deterioration of a man's soul. Fruit vendor Hans (Hans Hirschmüller) cannot please his family. His mother harps on his failures. His wife is openly discontent. He must peddle produce to his beloved ex-girlfriend, and he Read More

Supergirl

Synopsis: It is reasonably clear that this German language film is not based on the comic-book character who is a younger relative of Superman. The girl in this version of Supergirl suddenly appears from another planet and to a variety of people, from novelists to the American President, she announces an Read More

Whity

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Günther Kaufmann, Ron Randell

Synopsis: In his 36-year life, director Rainer Werner Fassbinder made some 40 films. He is perhaps best known to American audiences for his 1978 period drama, The Marriage of Maria Braun. A theme he examined repeatedly in his films was the unreasonable meanness of people, which he shows in a stark Read More

Beware of a Holy Whore

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Lou Castel, Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Synopsis: This film by wunderkind Rainer Werner Fassbinder, his 10th, is one of the rare films about filmmaking which was said by the critics to have succeeded both technically and as drama. In it, a German film crew sits in their Italian hotel, waiting for the arrival of their director (Lou Castel), their Read More

Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?

Crew: Director, Editor, Screenwriter

Actors: Kurt Raab, Lilith Ungerer, Amadeus Fengler

Synopsis: A technical designer enjoys a comfortable life with his wife and child. He has the approval of his boss and is in good health except for smoking too much according to his doctor. His wife is visited by a girlfriend one Sunday afternoon. The man is bored watching television and grabs a chandelier Read More

The American Soldier

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Karl Scheydt, Elga Sorbas, Jan George, Hark Bohm, Ingrid Caven

Synopsis: American Soldier (originally Der Amerikanische Soldat) was the third of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's "gangster trilogy." The film stars Karl Scheid as a German/American Vietnam veteran who takes a job as a hired assassin on behalf of the Munich crime lords. Scheid works both sides of the fence when Read More

Baal

Das Kaffeehaus

Crew: Director

The Niklashausen Journey

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Director Rainer Werner Fassbinder uses a 15th century legend as an allegory to the political situation in late-'60s Germany in The Niklashausen Journey. Combining medieval and contemporary imagery, the story follows Hans Boehm (Michael König), a shepherd who believes the Virgin Mary wants him to Read More

Gods of the Plague

Crew: Director, Editor, Screenwriter

Actors: Hanna Schygulla, Margarethe von Trotta, Harry Baer

Synopsis: Gods of the Plague (Gotter der Pest) is one of several German films directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder under his pseudonym of Franz Walsch. That's Fassbinder, however, playing the small role of a buyer of pornography. The main story involves a pair of two-bit hoods who spend most of the film Read More

Love Is Colder Than Death

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Ulli Lommel, Hanna Schygulla, Katrin Schaake, Ingrid Caven

Synopsis: An independent criminal's work is admired by organized crime. He is tortured after he refuses the invitation to join the gang but later relents and becomes a member. He continues to be a pimp and a murderer in this disturbing film that appeared at the Berlin Film Festival in 1969. This feature Read More

Katzelmacher

Crew: Director, Editor, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Hanna Schygulla, Rudolf Waldemar Brem, Elga Sorbas

Synopsis: Jorgos (Rainer Werner Fassbinder) is a Greek immigrant in Germany who encounters the intolerance of the locals against foreign workers. Open hostility turns to violence when he is beaten up by the authoritarian thugs after dating a German woman. Male and female nudity along with hetero and Read More

The Bridegroom, the Comedienne and the Pimp