Enfant Terrible

The life and loves of celebrated filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder are laid bare in this engrossing, unconventional biopic.

One of the defining names in the New German Cinema movement of the 1960s and 70s, Fassbinder made over 40 feature length films (including such queer classics as Fox and His Friends and The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant) before his death, aged just 37. With his riveting, bracingly stylised biopic, director Oskar Roehler paints an uncompromising portrait of the troubled (and troubling) man behind the camera, driven by a remarkable central performance from Oliver Masucci. Documenting key moments and relationships in Fassbinder’s life from his theatre beginnings through to the production of his final film Querelle, Enfant Terrible is no straightforward exercise in hagiography. Instead, Roehler has crafted a heady evocation of an artist fuelled by addiction, whose undeniable genius was matched only by his cruelty to those around him.

Screened as part of the Minds strand.