Join us for a 50th anniversary screening of a landmark of queer cinema, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. One of the prolific director’s enduring classics, the film utilizes a galvanizing, all-female cast, a single apartment setting, and razor-sharp dialogue to tell the story of a celebrated fashion designer who begins a dangerous infatuation with a vain model nearly half her age. As delicate as a porcelain figurine and as volatile as a wild animal in equal measures, Petra von Kant (Margit Carstensen in her most legendary role) lives with her devoted and criminally mistreated assistant Marlene (Irm Hermann) in a luxurious Berlin loft. Creatively stagnant and living vicariously through her past successes, Petra finds the inspiration she’s lacking when she lays eyes upon the beautiful but icy Karin (Hanna Schygulla).

Frameline46 will also screen Peter von Kant, French director François Ozon’s bold, gender-swapped re-imagination of the film, starring Denis Ménochet in the title role, Hanna Schygulla trading Karin for the role of the von Kant matriarch, and Isabelle Adjani as Peter’s muse and confidante.