Mahlzeiten

For his debut film, Meals, Edgar Reitz received the award for Best First Feature at the Venice Film Festival in 1967. Even before that, he had played a key role in the renewal of German cinema: as part of the group that, in the legendary Oberhausen Manifesto of 1962, proclaimed "Papa's cinema is dead!" and championed the concept of auteur cinema. He enjoyed a long-standing collaboration with Alexander Kluge (1932–2026), both academically and artistically. In Meals, Reitz realizes his vision of a new cinema for the first time. The love story of a young couple during the "economic miracle" era is told experimentally using elements such as voice-over narration, close-ups, inserts, and interviews. Elisabeth and Rolf meet as students and find themselves in a large marriage that forces their lives into strict social constraints and limits their dreams of self-realization. (A.P.)