Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
![Ali: Fear Eats the Soul](https://s3.amazonaws.com/criterion-production/films/7dd41aeeab0ce784854db5756730e849/rp77a94J13Y9gB1nMxqiZ85R5UCaSb_large.jpg)
The wildly prolific German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder paid homage to his cinematic hero Douglas Sirk with this update of that filmmaker’s 1955 All That Heaven Allows. A lonely widow (Brigitte Mira) meets a much younger Arab worker (El Hedi ben Salem) in a bar during a rainstorm. They fall in love, to their own surprise—and to the outright shock of their families, colleagues, and drinking buddies. In Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, Fassbinder expertly wields the emotional power of classic Hollywood melodrama to expose the racial tensions underlying contemporary German culture.
Special Features
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director of photography Jürgen Jürges, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Introduction from 2003 by filmmaker Todd Haynes
- Interviews from 2003 with actor Brigitte Mira and editor Thea Eymèsz
- Shahbaz Noshir’s 2002 short Angst isst Seele auf, which reunites Mira, Eymèsz, and Jürges to tell the story, based on real events, of an attack by neo-Nazis on a foreign actor while on his way to a stage performance of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s screenplay
- Signs of Vigorous Life: New German Cinema, a 1976 BBC program about the film movement of which Fassbinder was a part
- Scene from Fassbinder’s 1970 film The American Soldier that inspired Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
- Trailer
- PLUS: An essay by critic Chris Fujiwara
New cover by Michael Boland
Special Features
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director of photography Jürgen Jürges, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Introduction from 2003 by filmmaker Todd Haynes
- Interviews from 2003 with actor Brigitte Mira and editor Thea Eymèsz
- Shahbaz Noshir’s 2002 short Angst isst Seele auf, which reunites Mira, Eymèsz, and Jürges to tell the story, based on real events, of an attack by neo-Nazis on a foreign actor while on his way to a stage performance of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s screenplay
- Signs of Vigorous Life: New German Cinema, a 1976 BBC program about the film movement of which Fassbinder was a part
- Scene from Fassbinder’s 1970 film The American Soldier that inspired Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
- Trailer
- PLUS: An essay by critic Chris Fujiwara
New cover by Michael Boland
![Ali: Fear Eats the Soul](https://s3.amazonaws.com/criterion-production/films/7dd41aeeab0ce784854db5756730e849/rp77a94J13Y9gB1nMxqiZ85R5UCaSb_large.jpg)
Cast
- Brigitte Mira
- Emmi Kurowski
- El Hedi ben Salem
- Ali
- Barbara Valentin
- Barbara
- Irm Hermann
- Krista
- Elma Karlowa
- Mrs. Kargus
- Anita Bucher
- Mrs. Ellis
- Gusti Kreissl
- Paula
- Doris Mattes
- Mrs. Angermeyer
- Margit Symo
- Hedwig
- Katharina Herberg
- Girl in bar
- Lilo Pempeit
- Mrs. Münchmeyer
- Peter Gauhe
- Bruno
- Marquard Bohm
- Gruber
- Walter Sedlmayr
- Mr. Angermeyer
Credits
- Director
- Rainer Werner Fassbinder
- Writer
- Rainer Werner Fassbinder
- Director of photography
- Jürgen Jürges
- Assistant cameraman
- Thomas Schwan
- Assistant director
- Rainer Langhans
- Editor
- Thea Eymèsz
- Sound
- Fritz Müller-Scherz
- Makeup
- Helga Kempke
- Still photographer
- Peter Gauhe
- Lighting
- Ekkehard Heinrich
- Production manager
- Christian Hohoff
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