"Ali: Fear Eats the Soul"
1974
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder

A major film by Fassbinder, Ali is the outrageous, touching story of the bumpy love affair between a sixtyish German floorwasher and an inarticulate Arab mechanic barely half her age. A moving romance, a perverse social comedy, a biting drama of racial prejudice, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is all these things, although in Fassbinder's freewheeling vision it is not always easy to tell where one leaves off and another begins. Winner of the International Critics Prize, Cannes Film Festival. German with enhanced English subtitles. 94 minutes.