Introduction by Wolf Gremm on November 16, Q&A on November 17.

Fassbinder’s final acting role casts him as an alcoholic police lieutenant (garbed in a leopard-skin suit) tasked with foiling a bomb threat in West Germany’s near future. Adapted by Gremm and Robert Katz (The Cassandra Crossing) from Per Wahlöö’s dystopian novel Murder on the 31st Floor, Kamikaze ’89 imagines a totalitarian society ruled by a corporation (“The Combine”) that controls the media and suppresses all murmurs of dissent or unhappiness. Featuring Franco Nero as a journalist and Brigitte Mira (in her last collaboration with Fassbinder) as a director of personnel, Kamikaze ’89 filters dystopian parables like the concurrent Blade Runner through the West Berlin punk scene, resulting in a uniquely chilling prophecy.