The best Margit Carstensen’s movies
If you love cinema, you will share this ranking of the best Margit Carstensen’s movies, although you may have ordered them differently. In any case, we hope you love it and with a little luck discovering a movie that you still don’t know about Margit Carstensen.
Possession
7.3/10
A young woman left her family for an unspecified reason. The husband determines to find out the truth and starts following his wife. At first, he suspects that a man is involved. But gradually, he finds out more and more strange behaviors and bizarre incidents that indicate something more than a possessed love affair.
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
7.5/10
Petra von Kant is a successful fashion designer -- arrogant, caustic, and self-satisfied. She mistreats Marlene (her secretary, maid, and co-designer). Enter Karin, a 23-year-old beauty who wants to be a model. Petra falls in love with Karin and invites her to move in.
Chinese Roulette
7.2/10
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.
Sun Alley
6.8/10
A group of kids grow up on the short, wrong (east) side of the Sonnenallee in Berlin, right next to one of the few border crossings between East and West reserved for German citizens. The antics of these kids, their families, of the "West German" friends and relatives who come to visit, and of the East German border guards, all serve to illustrate the absurdity of everyday life on the Sonnenallee, and therefore throughout the former East Germany.
Martha
7.5/10
After the death of her abusive father, the lonely librarian Martha marries an equally vile businessman - Helmut.
Finsterworld
6.8/10
The film tells different stories in a kind of parallel Germany about love, affection and hatred.
Satan's Brew
6.7/10
This fast-paced black comedy by wunderkind director Rainer Werner Fassbinder follows the frantic efforts of a starving and confused writer, Walter Kranz 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 enough to keep his publisher's royalty advances coming, he seeks out a woman he imagines is a prostitute and interviews her for material. He is also inspired to utter some poetry, which his brassy, outspoken wife identifies as coming from the famous homosexuality-advocating mystical German poet, Stefan George. This inspires Walter to take a closer look at the gay scene, and he quickly becomes a sort of celebrity there.
Bremen Freedom
7/10
A very stylized TV version of the Fassbinder play. The set consists of a few pieces of furniture in front of a large screen on which coastal scenery is back projected. Geesche is a nineteenth century woman who wants to have a mind of her own. She defies convention and will do anything to achieve her freedom from oppression by her family and friends. (synopsis written by Will Gilbert)
Tenderness of the Wolves
6.3/10
A German serial killer preys on boys and young men during the so-called years of crisis between the wars. Based on the true story of Fritz Haarmann, aka the Butcher of Hanover and the Vampire of Hanover.
World on a Wire
7.7/10
Cybernetics engineer Fred Stiller uncovers a massive corporate conspiracy involving a virtual reality computer project.
Angry Harvest
7.1/10
In the winter of 1942-43, a Jewish family leaps from a train going through Silesia. They are separated in the woods, and Leon, a local peasant who's now a farmer of some wealth, discovers the woman, Rosa, and hides her in his cellar. Leon's a middle-aged Catholic bachelor, tormented by his sexual drive. He doesn't tell Rosa he's seen signs her husband is alive, and he begs her to love him. Rosa offers herself to Leon if he'll help a local Jew in hiding who needs money. Leon pays, and love between Rosa and him does develop, but then Leon's peasant subservience and his limited empathy lead to tragedy. At the war's end, a ray of sunshine comes from an unexpected place.
Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven
7.5/10
After her husband kills his boss and himself, Mother Kusters becomes drawn into the activities of the German Communist party and then a group of anarchists.
Fassbinder
6.7/10
A film portrait of the influential Bavarian actor, director and screenwriter who publicly confessed
his homosexuality.
Agnes and His Brothers
6.6/10
Focuses on three very different siblings, all searching for happiness. Hans-Jörg is a sex addicted librarian, who is interested in young students. Werner is a successful politician with a dysfunctional family. Agnes, a trans woman, works as a table dancer in a night club. The three brothers just have one thing in common: their longing for a happy life.
The Third Generation
6.8/10
A mogul merrily funds terrorists to boost his computer sales, by panicking West German government and industry c. 1980, as the third generation of Western European left-wing activists forms, after crippling of the violent Red Army Faction. International capitalist PJ Lurz's secretary is a gang member, while her police commissioner father-in-law/lover hired Lurz' corporate security force.
The Coffee House
6.1/10
Avant-garde adaptation of a Carlo Goldoni play. Well-to-do Venetians congregate in a coffee house and discuss their problems.
Schlingensief – A Voice That Shook the Silence
7.2/10
Using unpublished and newly digitalised archive footage and film material, Bettina Böhler has brilliantly assembled this film about the life and work of the exceptional artist Christoph Schlingensief, who died in 2010.
Shattered Glass
6.8/10
The 120 Days of Bottrop
6/10
An eccentric homage to the Rainer Werner Fassbinder days of German filmmaking.
Fear of Fear
7.4/10
After having her second child, a German housewife suffers from post-partum depression before inexplicably falling into a continually misdiagnosed mental state, befuddling her relatives.
