PETER VON KANT / THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT

ABOUT THE FILMS:

PETER VON KANT, 2022, Strand Releasing, 85 min, France/Germany, Dir: François Ozon. 

Opening this year’s Berlin Film Festival to critical acclaim, Francois Ozon’s retelling of Fassbinder’s classic, THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT is now PETER VON KANT, starring Denis Menochet in the lead role and Isabelle Adjani as his muse Sidonie. Peter Von Kant is a successful, famous director who lives with his assistant Karl, whom he likes to mistreat and humiliate. Through the great actress Sidonie, he meets and falls in love with Amir, a handsome young man of modest means who he offers to to help break into cinema… Ozon creates a tribute to the original and creates something completely his own.

FORMAT: DCP

THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT, 1972, Janus Films, 124 min, Germany, Dir: Rainer Werner Fassbinder. 

In the early 1970s, Rainer Werner Fassbinder discovered the American melodramas of Douglas Sirk and was inspired by them to begin working in a new, more intensely emotional register. One of the first and best-loved films of this period in his career is THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT, which balances a realistic depiction of tormented romance with staging that remains true to the director’s roots in experimental theater. This unforgettable, unforgiving dissection of the imbalanced relationship between a haughty fashion designer (Margit Carstensen) and a beautiful but icy ingenue (Hanna Schygulla)—based, in a sly gender reversal, on the writer-director’s own desperate obsession with a young actor—is a true Fassbinder affair, featuring exquisitely claustrophobic cinematography by Michael Ballhaus and full-throttle performances by an all-female cast.

FORMAT: 35mm