Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

Screening as part of Too Much: Melodrama on Film

Considered one of the great works of New German Cinema, Fassbinder’s tribute to his cinematic hero Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows (also showing as part of our season) reimagines the story in postwar West Germany, starring the director’s real-life lover El Hedi ben Salem as Ali, the much younger Moroccan migrant worker that lonely widow Emmi embarks on a relationship with. Fassbinder expertly employs the trappings of the classic Hollywood melodrama to broach issues of ageism and racism in contemporary Munich.