Fear Eats the Soul1974

Director
Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Actors

Brigitte Mira (Emmi)
El Hedi ben Salem (Ali)
Irm Hermann (Krista)
Elma Karlowa (Mrs. Kargus)
Anita Bucher (Mrs. Ellis)
Gusti Kreissl (Paula)

A love story about two people the world insists on hating.
In 1970s Munich, lonely cleaning lady Emmi, a widowed German in her sixties, ducks into a bar to escape the rain and meets Ali, a Moroccan guest worker decades younger than her. Their brief conversation turns into a dance, then into an unexpected romance, and soon Ali moves into her small flat and they marry, to the shock and disgust of Emmi’s adult children, neighbors, and co‑workers. The couple are openly stared at in the street, shunned in their apartment building and at the local café, and treated with contempt at Emmi’s workplace because of their age difference and Ali’s status as a foreigner. Under this pressure, Emmi begins to adopt some of the prejudices of those around her, while Ali retreats into familiar company and briefly seeks comfort elsewhere, and their relationship starts to crack under the weight of fear, humiliation, and isolation.
The wildly prolific German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder paid homage to his cinematic hero Douglas Sirk with this update of that filmmaker’s All That Heaven Allows (1955).
“A powerful attempt to deal with a range of serious issues as well as the characters’ own complex psychologies. Visually and dramatically intense, it remains one of Fassbinder’s finest.” – Film4
“One of the most beautiful films ever made, plain and simple.” – Time Out
“Fassbinder made so many incredible films, but this is certainly up there with his finest.” – Little White Lies