THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT: Women In Film Fest @ FOMO Secret CInema
Thursday 2. April at 18:30 - 20:35
FOMO Secret Cinema, Tbilisi
Rainer Werner Fassbinder | 1972 | West Germany | 2h04m | German language with English subtitles
This is film #15 in FOMO’s extended Women in Film Week, a program built around female performance, female subjectivity, and the many ways women’s stories are written, performed, directed, and brought to life on screen.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT takes place almost entirely inside the apartment of a successful fashion designer whose control over her home and working life begins to break down when she falls for a younger woman. What begins as flirtation turns into a struggle over attention, status, submission and emotional need. The film stays in that room and lets every gesture, silence and shift in posture carry weight.
Margit Carstensen gives Petra both hauteur and panic, while Hanna Schygulla and Irm Hermann complete a love triangle built on desire, humiliation, and service. Fassbinder came to the film through theatre, and you can feel that in the blocking and repetition, but the camera keeps turning the room into something harsher and more exposed. The result is less a love story than an anatomy of domination, vanity, and emotional dependence.
WHY IT’S INCLUDED IN THIS WEEK’S PROGRAM: I've decided to show THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT because it places female relationships at the centre without softening their complexity. The film confronts power, dependency, and emotional manipulation between women with unusual directness, refusing to idealise or simplify. And the lead performance from Carstensen is one of the all-time greats, up there with Elizabeth Taylor's turn in WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF and Gina Rowlands in Cassavetes' A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE.
LOCATION: FOMO Secret Cinema, Bazari Orbeliani, Tbilisi. A five minute walk from Liberty Square metro.
HOW TO FIND FOMO: Enter the Bazari via Atoneli St above Carrefour and take the stairs on your left as soon as you enter next to the karaoke booth. FOMO is one flight up. Video instructions here: https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17933106294029235
T&Cs: Guests must enter the Bazari by 23:00 to gain access to the FOMO Cinema Lounge Bar. If the Atoneli St entrance is locked you can get in via the side entrance on Sulkhanishvil St between 21:00 and 23:00. We close at 02:00 each evening. No refunds are issued unless we cancel the screening ourselves.
FOMO Secret Cinema • Bazari Orbeliani stairwell, 0105 Tbilisi, Georgia
