This cult classic features a hypnotic soundtrack by Edgar Froese of Tangerine Dream, a stunning 1980s New Wave production design, and a supporting cast of German cinema icons. It is a dystopic vision of a “perfect” society—Germany, 1989—starring R. W. Fassbinder in his last acting role. As police inspector Jansen, Fassbinder—even more than typically outrageous, dressed in a leopard-skin suit—investigates a bomb threat against a publishing house that controls the media. Jansen’s tactics range from the hardboiled to the ridiculous, but they work: his research uncovers a thirty-first floor in a supposed thirty-story building, whose denizens—exiled writers and editors of conscience—labor under the promise of publishing a journal of free thinking.

The lab was unable to supply the previously announced 35mm print, but we are happy to screen this new digital restoration.