Although “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul” (orig. German title: “Angst essen Seele auf”) was released nearly 50 years ago (1973), the themes of this Rainer Werner Fassbinder drama have remained current. In a bar, the German widow Emmi meets Ali, a Moroccan man 20 years her junior. This chance encounter evolves into a love story. Ali moves in with Emmi and they get married. But the connection that the 60-year-old cleaning woman and the Gastarbeiter (guest worker) share is met with prejudice and hostility from Emmi’s friends and family. The building’s other tenants, a shopkeeper, Emmi’s co-worker and even her own children frown upon their love affair. And the young marriage is not only threatened from the outside. Slowly, an internal crisis begins to emerge.

To commence the event, Dr. Johannes Schütz, Research Associate at the Chair of Modern and Contemporary History, will hold a brief lecture about the history of immigration and racism in eastern and western Germany after 1945.