Germany in Autumn, a collaborative effort of 11 of the leading filmmakers of the New German Cinema, was designed as a protest against the new tendencies toward Fascism in West Germany. The film takes the form of a series of reflections on the tragic events of Autumn 1977, when public official Hanns Martin Schleyer was kidnapped and executed by members of the Baader-Meinhof group, whose core members then died rather mysteriously in Stuttgart-Stammheim prison. Many viewers were disappointed in the film, politically and artistically, but Germany in Autumn remains an important and unique film in contemporary German Cinema, and also contains a revealing autobiographical sequence by Fassbinder. The filmmakers--Fassbinder, Kluge, Schlöndorff, writer Heinrich Böll and others--incorporate fictional sketches, documentary material and historical newsreel footage to take stock of their society--and their place in it--at a crucial point. “Terrorism and state repression provide the poles of (the film's) political axis, as well as its articulated theme...” (Take One).