Bringemovies
← Browse Movies
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
TITLE DETAILS

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

1974-03-05 · 93 min · ★ 7.7

Romance · Drama

Emmi Kurowski, a cleaning lady, is lonely in her old age. Her husband died years ago, and her grown children offer little companionship. One night she goes to a bar frequented by Arab immigrants and strikes up a friendship with middle-aged mechanic Ali. Their relationship soon develops into something more, and Emmi's family and neighbors criticize their spontaneous marriage. Soon Emmi and Ali are forced to confront their own insecurities about their future.

Open detail page

Trailers are previews, not full movies.

No authorized playback source configured. Use the legal watch options below.

Production details

Directors
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Production companies
Tango Film, Filmverlag der Autoren
Countries
Germany
Status
Released
Budget
USD 130,000
Revenue
USD 186,757

Top Cast

Brigitte MiraBrigitte MiraEmmi Kurowski
El Hedi ben SalemEl Hedi ben SalemAli
Irm HermannIrm HermannKrista
Barbara ValentinBarbara ValentinBarbara
Elma KarlowaElma KarlowaMrs. Kargus
Anita BucherMrs. Ellis
Gusti KreisslGusti KreisslPaula
Doris MattesDoris MattesMrs. Angermayer
Margit SymoMargit SymoHedwig
Katharina HerbergKatharina HerbergBardame
Lilo PempeitLilo PempeitMrs. Munchmeyer
Walter SedlmayrWalter SedlmayrMr. Angermayer
Rainer Werner FassbinderRainer Werner FassbinderEugen
Karl ScheydtKarl ScheydtAlbert
Peter GauhePeter GauheBruno
Marquard BohmMarquard BohmGruber
Hark BohmHark BohmDoctor
Kurt RaabKurt RaabCar Mechanic

Title information and images are supplied by TMDb. Explore our discovery guide for advice on comparing metadata and legal viewing options.

Where to watch

Availability provided by JustWatch via TMDb. Offers can change. Provider links are listed on TMDb; full playback requires a separately authorized source.

Streaming

HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max

Rental

Amazon Video, Apple TV Store, Fandango At Home

Purchase

Amazon Video, Apple TV Store, Fandango At Home

View authorized watch options on TMDb

Recommendations

Cocoon
★ 6.1
Cocoon2020Romance · Drama

In the heat of a shimmering Berlin summer, Nora spends her days as a third wheel to her older sister Jule and her best friend Aylin. When Romy comes onto the scene, a friendship blossoms. Nora instantly falls for her, opening up a whole new world and unexpected summer of love.

Head-On
★ 7.5
Head-On2004Romance · Drama

With the intention to break free from the strict familial restrictions, a suicidal young woman sets up a marriage of convenience with a forty-year-old addict, an act that will lead to an outburst of envious love.

Malcolm & Marie
★ 7.0
Malcolm & Marie2021Romance · Drama

As a filmmaker and his girlfriend return home from his movie premiere, smoldering tensions and painful revelations push them toward a romantic reckoning.

The Mother
★ 6.0
The Mother2003Romance · Drama

A grandmother has a passionate affair with a man half her age, who is also sleeping with her daughter.

Laurel Canyon
★ 6.0
Laurel Canyon2003Romance · Drama

When an uptight young man and his fiancée move into his libertine mother's house, the resulting clash of life attitudes shakes everyone up.

Mammal
★ 6.3
Mammal2016Drama

After Margaret, a divorcée living in Dublin, loses her teenage son, she develops an unorthodox relationship with Joe, a homeless youth. Their tentative trust is threatened by his involvement with a violent gang and the escalation of her ex-husband's grieving rage.

Someday We'll Tell Each Other Everything
★ 5.8
Someday We'll Tell Each Other Everything2023Drama

Set in a warm summer in 1990 in former East Germany, it follows a young woman who begins a relationship with a charismatic farmer who is twice her age.

The Souvenir
★ 6.1
The Souvenir2019Romance · Drama

A shy but ambitious film student falls into an intense, emotionally fraught relationship with a charismatic but untrustworthy older man.

Blue Valentine
★ 7.0
Blue Valentine2010Romance · Drama

Dean and Cindy live a quiet life in a modest neighborhood. They appear to have the world at their feet at the outset of the relationship. However, his lack of ambition and her retreat into self-absorption cause potentially irreversible cracks in their marriage.

Newness
★ 6.1
Newness2017Romance · Drama

In contemporary Los Angeles, two millennials navigating a social media–driven hookup culture begin a relationship that pushes both emotional and physical boundaries.

Middle of the Night
★ 7.0
Middle of the Night1959Romance · Drama

Jerry Kingsley is a wealthy garment manufacturer left lonely in his 50s when his wife dies. Despite the difference in their ages, he strikes up a romance with divorced 24-year-old receptionist Betty. The relationship is dismissed by his daughter, Lillian, discouraged by his sister, Evelyn, and denounced by Betty's mother. But when Jerry begins to mention marriage, even Betty is forced to confront her ambivalence.

The Reader
★ 7.5
The Reader2008Romance · Drama

The story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who, as a teenager in the late 1950s, had an affair with an older woman, Hanna, who then disappeared only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a concentration camp guard late in the war. He alone realizes that Hanna is illiterate and may be concealing that fact at the expense of her freedom.

Love in Thoughts
★ 6.4
Love in Thoughts2004Drama

A posthumous look at the last days of Guenther's life as he, his best friend, and his sister let loose on a four-day binge of alcohol, drugs, and sex.

Monster's Ball
★ 6.8
Monster's Ball2001Romance · Drama

A prison guard begins a tentative romance with the unsuspecting widow of a man whose execution he presided over.

Gloomy Sunday
★ 7.7
Gloomy Sunday1999Romance · Drama

Budapest in the 1930s. Restaurant owner Laszlo hires pianist András to play in his restaurant. Both men fall in love with the beautiful waitress Ilona who inspires András to his only composition. His song of Gloomy Sunday is, at first, loved and then feared, for its melancholic melody sets off a chain of suicides. The fragile balance of the erotic ménage à trois is sent off kilter when the German Hans falls in love with Ilona as well.

The World to Come
★ 7.0
The World to Come2021Romance · Drama

In 1856, two women forge a close connection despite their isolation on the American frontier.

Shirley
★ 6.1
Shirley2020Drama

A famous horror writer finds inspiration for her next book after she and her husband take in a young couple.

Antares
★ 5.9
Antares2004Drama

A deadly car crash sets off three parallel stories of women at crisis points, faltering behind the doors of the same, plain Vienna apartment block.

All of You
★ 6.3
All of You2025Romance · Drama

Laura and Simon have been best friends since college. Over the years, they've realized their bond is more than platonic. Can they—and should they—risk everything to explore a love that has existed all along?

China Girl
★ 6.0
China Girl1987Romance · Drama

Teenage lovers Tony and Tyan-Hwa tip the balance of power in New York's Little Italy and Chinatown.

Similar titles

2 or 3 Things I Know About Him
★ 6.6
2 or 3 Things I Know About Him2005Drama

What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)

Day for Night
★ 7.8
Day for Night1973Drama

A committed filmmaker struggles to complete his latest project while coping with a myriad of crises, personal and professional, among the cast and crew.

The Next Best Thing
★ 5.2
The Next Best Thing2000Romance · Drama

A comedy-drama about best friends - one a straight woman, Abbie, the other a gay man, Robert - who decide to have a child together. Five years later, Abbie falls in love with a straight man and wants to move away with her and Robert's little boy Sam, and a nasty custody battle ensues.

We Shall Overcome
★ 7.2
We Shall Overcome2006Drama

A drama about a boy who's inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and challenges repressive school authority in 1969 Denmark.

Alias
★ 6.5
Alias1999Drama

On her birthday, Juliette is too upset to worry about the strange cleaner who imitates her every move and lusts after her clothing.

Shoppen
★ 6.0
Shoppen2007Drama

An almost bombproof method of staying single is called "speed dating". 18 people participate in such an event. Nine men and nine women are sitting opposite each other in order to sell optimally under the pressure of time and to find a partner. They are looking for a date - and have nothing else in common. They talk about allergies, cappuccino, consumer behavior, buses and designer clothes: the list of serious embarrassments is long. Yet none of the lonely hearts has given up the hope of romance.

Au Revoir les Enfants
★ 7.5
Au Revoir les Enfants1987Drama

Au revoir les enfants tells a heartbreaking story of friendship and devastating loss concerning two boys living in Nazi-occupied France. At a provincial Catholic boarding school, the precocious youths enjoy true camaraderie—until a secret is revealed. Based on events from writer-director Malle’s own childhood, the film is a subtle, precisely observed tale of courage, cowardice, and tragic awakening.

The Piano Teacher
★ 7.3
The Piano Teacher2001Romance · Drama

Erika Kohut, a sexually repressed piano teacher living with her domineering mother, meets a young man who starts romantically pursuing her.

Forrest Gump
★ 8.5
Forrest Gump1994Romance · Drama

A man with a low IQ has accomplished great things in his life and been present during significant historic events—in each case, far exceeding what anyone imagined he could do. But despite all he has achieved, his one true love eludes him.

American Beauty
★ 8.0
American Beauty1999Drama

Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation with his daughter's attractive friend.

Citizen Kane
★ 8.0
Citizen Kane1941Drama

Newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. As a result, every well-meaning, tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event.

Beauty and the Beast
★ 7.5
Beauty and the Beast1946Romance · Drama

The story of a gentle-hearted beast in love with a simple and beautiful girl. She is drawn to the repellent but strangely fascinating Beast, who tests her fidelity by giving her a key, telling her that if she doesn't return it to him by a specific time, he will die of grief. She is unable to return the key on time, but it is revealed that the Beast is the genuinely handsome one. A simple tale of tragic love that turns into a surreal vision of death, desire, and beauty.

Belle de Jour
★ 7.3
Belle de Jour1967Romance · Drama

Beautiful young housewife Séverine Serizy cannot reconcile her masochistic fantasies with her everyday life alongside dutiful husband Pierre. When her lovestruck friend Henri mentions a secretive high-class brothel run by Madame Anais, Séverine begins to work there during the day under the name Belle de Jour. But when one of her clients grows possessive, she must try to go back to her normal life.

On the Waterfront
★ 7.8
On the Waterfront1954Romance · Drama

A prizefighter-turned-longshoreman with a conscience goes up against labor leaders to expose corruption, extortion, and murder among the union ranks.

Paris, Texas
★ 8.1
Paris, Texas1984Drama

A man wanders out of the desert not knowing who he is. His brother finds him, and helps to pull his memory back of the life he led before he walked out on his family and disappeared four years earlier.

The Tin Drum
★ 7.0
The Tin Drum1979Drama

In 1924, Oskar Matzerath is born in the Free City of Danzig. At age three, he falls down a flight of stairs and stops growing. In 1939, World War II breaks out.

The Marriage of Maria Braun
★ 7.4
The Marriage of Maria Braun1979Drama

Maria marries a young soldier in the last days of World War II, only for him to go missing in the war. She must rely on her beauty and ambition to navigate the difficult post-war years alone.

La Jetée
★ 7.8
La Jetée1962Romance · Drama

A man confronts his past during an experiment that attempts to find a solution to the problems of a post-apocalyptic world caused by a world war.

Twister
★ 6.6
Twister1996Drama

An unprecedented series of violent tornadoes is sweeping across Oklahoma. Tornado chasers, headed by Dr. Jo Harding, attempt to release a groundbreaking device that will allow them to track them and create a more advanced warning system. They are joined by Jo's soon to be ex-husband Bill, a former tornado chaser himself, and his girlfriend Melissa.

The Theory of Everything
★ 7.8
The Theory of Everything2014Romance · Drama

Once a healthy, active young man, Hawking received an earth-shattering diagnosis at 21 years of age. With Jane fighting tirelessly by his side, Stephen embarks on his most ambitious scientific work, studying the very thing he now has precious little of – time.

Your favorites

Recently viewed

Watch

Choose an authorized server.

Full video from an operator-configured authorized source. Official trailers use a separate player. If a server fails, retry or select another authorized server.

Legal watch options

Official trailer

Trailer preview only. Press Play to start.

Privacy choices

Favorites stay in your browser. Movie images load from TMDb. YouTube trailers contact YouTube only after you allow external media and choose a trailer. Advertising consent, if ads are enabled, is managed separately by the operator’s certified CMP.

Privacy policy

After allowing external media, choose the trailer button to load its player.