Is This Fate / Von wegen Schicksal (1979) dir. Helga Reidemeister

Irene Rakowitz, aged 48, is a divorced mother of four, who lives with her two youngest children in West Berlin’s Märkisches Viertel public housing district, surviving on disability payments. Her ex-husband, a former miner, lives in the same high-rise. But loud and abrasive conflict persists regarding his ongoing influence on the children. The older daughters are hateful and judgmental of their mother, calling her a ‘crackpot’. Irene Rakowitz holds nothing back as she talks about why her family is falling apart, while at the same time expressing, sometimes vehemently, her own ambitions, in front of the camera and again during the editing process, throughout which she is associated.