Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
German theatrical release poster
Directed by	Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Produced by	Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Written by	Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Starring	Brigitte Mira El Hedi ben Salem Barbara Valentin Irm Hermann
Cinematography	Jürgen Jürges
Edited by	Thea Eymèsz
Release date	5 March 1974 (West Germany) 31 October 1974 (U.S.)
Running time	93 min.
Country	West Germany
Language	German

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (German: Angst essen Seele auf) is a 1974 West German film written and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and starring Brigitte Mira and El Hedi ben Salem. The film won two awards at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival. It is considered to be one of Fassbinder's most powerful works and is hailed by many as a masterpiece. Brigitte Mira received the German Film Award for her performance. The film revolves around an unlikely relationship which develops between an elderly woman and a Moroccan migrant worker in post-war Germany.

Ali (Salem), is a Moroccan Gastarbeiter (guest worker) in his late thirties, and Emmi (Mira), is a 60-year-old widowed cleaning woman. They meet when Emmi ducks inside a bar, driven by the rain and drawn by the exotic Arabic music (Al Asfouryeh by Sabah) she says she has heard so often on her walk home from work. A woman in the bar (Katharina Herberg) who is part of Ali's Arabic-speaking cohort tauntingly suggests Ali ask Emmi ("the old woman") to dance, and Emmi accepts. A strange and unlikely friendship develops, then a romance and soon they are living together in Emmi's flat. Out of a professed sense of responsibility but also hopefulness, Emmi first confides in her newfound love when she goes to visit her daughter Krista (Irm Hermann) and her tyrannical son-in-law Eugen (Fassbinder himself) and announces that she is in love with Ali; Eugen thinks she is screwy and Krista as well can only think that her mother - who has been a widow for years - is fantasizing.

The first real threat to their relationship comes with a visit by the landlord's son, who has been sent on the assumption that Emmi has taken in a lodger to point out to her that sub-letting is against Emmi's tenancy agreement, and that Ali must leave within a day. Impulsively, and fearful of losing this new joy in her life, Emmi claims that she and Ali are planning to marry to alleviate this little difficulty. This changes everything for the landlord's son, the only character in the film who consistently accepts their relationship as unproblematic. After he has apologized for the misapprehension and departed, Emmi speaks to Ali with embarrassment of her having invented the idea of their marrying but, to her surprise and delight, Ali concurs that it is an excellent idea, and we next see them emerging from the civil court, married.