For all its attention to the mundane aspects of Berlin’s politics and society, this 1978 film by writer-director Helke Sander can also be read as a sly take on the New German Cinema. Sander stars as a freelance photographer whose collaborative project chronicling life around the Berlin Wall runs afoul of its state sponsors, who find it too political; its private investors, who question its artistic merit; and a women’s political organization backing the project, whose leaders are unhappy that it doesn’t center on women. Despite the episodic, quasi-documentary style, this comes across as an engaged vision of the artist’s struggle for integrity amid a compromised cultural scene. In German with subtitles. 98 min.
