Fassbinder’s second feature depicts the intolerance of a circle of financially and sexually frustrated friends when an immigrant laborer moves to their Munich neighborhood, exposing latent currents of bourgeois fascism. This Greek newcomer, played with impish deadpan innocence by the director himself, becomes an object of cautious curiosity and the inevitable catalyst for their group’s previously suppressed internal conflict. Titled for a Bavarian slang pejorative for foreign worker, this scalpel-sharp experiment is a stark black-and-white depiction of a world where boredom feeds self-hatred and violence.

Subtitles: HR