Fassbinder February: Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

Decided upon by our group of featured speakers as being the best entry point into Fassbinder’s oeuvre, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul has him going full-Sirk in this story of an older white woman, Emmi (frequent Fassbinder collaborator Brigitte Mira), who falls in love with a Moroccan immigrant half her age, Ali (El Hedi ben Salem, Fassbinder’s lover at the time). Fear Eats the Soul works with many themes that Fassbinder ceaselessly explored, but it also retains an easy, surface-level likeability on account of its two charming leads and incisive exploration of how people behave when they need other people.
This discussion features Joshua Ray, film critic for The Lens.