In this controversial, unclassifiable cult film, secret agent Mark (Sam Neill) reunites with Anna (Isabelle Adjani) and their young son only to be asked for a divorce. But it’s not because his wife has been seeing another man - when Mark hires a private investigator to follow her, he learns she’s been spending time with a strange, tentacled creature (designed by famed special effects artist Carlo Rambaldi). Director Andrzej Zulawski was in the midst of his own difficult divorce when he came up with this nightmarish mix of domestic distress, bloody violence and bio-horror. Adjani’s performance in dual roles (she also plays Anna’s doppelgänger, Helen) earned a César as well as a Best Actress award at Cannes. “POSSESSION starts on a hysterical note, stays there and surpasses it as the film progresses.” – Variety

Margit Carstensen (THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT) is spell-binding as housewife Margot Staudte, whose staid, middle-class existence descends into inexorable madness with her second pregnancy. Fassbinder is in his element here with this deeply riveting psychological portrait. Originally made for television, the film is as radically, ecstatically far from a “TV movie” as can be. In German with English subtitles.

Successful fashion designer and caustic narcissist Petra von Kant (Margit Carstensen) and her masochistic, sometimes-lover assistant Marlene (Irm Hermann) share a life of rigorous garment designing and brutal emotional manipulation from within Petra’s apartment. When aspiring model Karin Thimm (Hannah Schygulla) enters the situation, the instantly attracted Petra welcomes the supple young thing into her sick dollhouse with open arms. But Karin’s calm, inscrutable gaze belies her ruthless nature, and soon Petra is as much a casualty of obsession as long-suffering Marlene. A masterwork of intoxicating cinematography, THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT is Rainer Werner Fassbinder at his ravaging best. In German with English subtitles.