Marianne and Juliane

Two sisters in seventies Germany. Juliane works at a feminist magazine and looks for change through writing. Marianne joins an armed organisation. When Marianne is imprisoned and found dead in her cell, Juliane refuses the official account and spends years trying to prove the truth. Margarethe von Trotta wrote and directed. Jutta Lampe plays Juliane, Barbara Sukowa plays Marianne. The source is real: Gudrun Ensslin of the Red Army Faction and her sister Christiane. The film changes the names without hiding the case. It neither defends nor condemns political violence; its interest is in why two sisters from the same house took different roads. The German title means the leaden time, and the phrase defining the period spread from this film. It won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1981. The prison visits are shot through glass and the two women never meet in the same frame. Who it is for: viewers who like political drama and New German Cinema. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a clear political answer; the film leans on no side.