Germany in Autumn

Hans Peter Cloos
Maximiliane Mainka
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Alexander Kluge
Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus
Alf Brustellin
Katja Rupé
Volker Schlöndorff
Edgar Reitz
Bernhard Sinkel
Peter Schubert

1978•123 min.•

Germany

★6.2(28)

Germany in Autumn does not have a plot per se; it mixes documentary footage, along with standard movie scenes, to give the audience the mood of Germany during the late 1970s. The movie covers the two month time period during 1977 when a businessman was kidnapped, and later murdered, by the left-wing terrorists known as the RAF-Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Fraction). The businessman had been kidnapped in an effort to secure the release of the orginal leaders of the RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang. When the kidnapping effort and a plane hijacking effort failed, the three most prominent leaders of the RAF, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe, all committed suicide in prison. It has become an article of faith within the left-wing community that these three were actually murdered by the state.