Margarethe von Trotta

A young woman’s life is scrutinized by police and tabloid press after she spends the night with a suspected terrorist.Read More »

The life story of the multi-talented German nun Hildegard von Bingen. The film portrays an original woman – best known as a composer and religious visionary – whose grand claims often run counter to the patriarchal world around her.

The monks and nuns at the convent become a kind of family, offering both confidants and enemies. For example Jutta, struggling with her jealousy of Hildegard’s success, and the young Richardis who worships Hildegard both as an intellectual role model and a mother figure.Read More »

Quote:
The former owner of a craftsman’s business, Wolfgang Kunert, who has been unemployed for a long time, is waiting at the job agency. When it is his turn after four hours of waiting time, which Heidi Ganz, the agency responsible for him, cannot offer him any work and points out his misconduct in general, he loses his nerves. He pulls out a gun and takes Mrs. Ganz hostageRead More »

Quote:
In this film, director Margarethe Von Trotta presents an inspiring and impressionistic portrait of the European socialist leader (1870 – 1919) who spent much time in prison as a result of her unpopular political views. In a performance which won her the Best Actress nod at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival, Barbara Sukowa reveals Rosa’s multifaceted personality which encompassed a love of nature, a sensitivity to suffering, an unflagging hatred of militarism, and a yearning for peace. After viewing this screen biography, many will no doubt agree with Helen Deutsch’s evaluation of Rosa Luxemburg: “She was too great to be considered ‘only a woman,’ even by her enemies.”Read More »

Quote:
Two sisters both fight for women’s rights. Juliane is a journalist and Marianne a terrorist. When Marianne is jailed, Juliane feels obligated to help her despite their differing views on how to live.Read More »

From the L.A. Times:
November 03, 1995
Kevin Thomas

“LOVE AND THE BERLIN WALL”

Margarethe von Trotta’s beautiful, stirring love story “The Promise” reveals, through the lives of one young couple, the profound impact the Berlin Wall had on all Germans, East and West alike. It is a splendid example of classic screen storytelling by a renowned international filmmaker, a work of strength and simplicity that illuminates with flawless craftsmanship many complex issues and contradictions. Epic in scale, spanning the entire 28-year existence of the Wall, it is at once romantic and political yet ultimately personal.Read More »

Quote:
A reminder of the New School philosophy professor Hannah Arendt, and the controversy she provoked when she published her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, might not be such a bad thing in an era in which so many feel so compelled to simplify societies’ most galling atrocities. Just as it’s more inviting to believe that various terrorist factions around the world are inhuman creatures concerned only with gobbling up America’s precious freedom, it’s also more comfortable to deny the architects and executioners of the Holocaust their humanity, as that distances everyone else from their own potential capacity for cruelty.Read More »

From timeout.com:

Few film-makers wear their hearts as openly on their sleeves as Margarethe von Trotta, and her fascination with women (their relationships with each other and their definition – often redefinition – of themselves) is as apparent in this, her first solo feature, as it was in the later The German Sisters or Friends and Husbands. Christa Klages (Engel) is a young mother who turns terrorist and bank robber to prevent the closure of a crêche which she helps to run and her daughter attends. On the run with her friend and sometime lover, Christa is pursued by the police, and more mysteriously by a young woman (Thalbach) who was her hostage in the bank raid. What von Trotta has to say about her women is compelling, and she remains one of the few film-makers to portray terrorists convincingly. But the enigma of the hostage runs through the film as elusively as a character in a dream – vitally important at any given moment, but irritatingly meaningless when taken as a whole – and undermines the conviction of this feminist thriller which is otherwise so gloriously rooted in West Germany’s present.Read More »

Olga and Ruth become friends. Olga is independent, separated from her husband, living with an immigrant pianist… Read More »