Cinema
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
Angst essen Seele auf
Rainer Werner Fassbinder · 1974
Synopsis
One rainy evening in Munich, Emmi, a widow of about sixty who works as a cleaner, enters a café from which foreign music is coming. Ali, a Moroccan worker much younger than she is, invites her to dance, walks her home and spends the night at her place. When the landlord's son comes to reproach her for lodging a tenant, Emmi invents that they are going to marry; Ali finds the idea excellent, and they marry. Neighbours, colleagues and Emmi's children then turn their backs on them.
Context
Written and directed by its author, the film takes its inspiration from the melodramas of Douglas Sirk, in particular All That Heaven Allows, whose structure it reuses by setting it in the Germany of immigrant workers. Fassbinder gave the role of Emmi to Brigitte Mira and that of Ali to El Hedi ben Salem. The film was shown in Munich on 5 March 1974 and at Cannes the same year; German television broadcast it for the first time in 1977.
Who it is for
A film of about an hour and a half, in German with a few lines in Arabic, whose title takes up a sentence of Ali's.
Prizes and reception
International Critics' Prize and Ecumenical Jury Prize at Cannes in 1974; German Film Award for acting for Brigitte Mira.