Posits a new, aesthetically and politically radical, transnational German cinema - "transnational" also in the sense of concerns with migration, the movement of capital across borders, and globalization.

Posits a new, aesthetically and politically radical, transnational German cinema - "transnational" also in the sense of concerns with migration, the movement of capital across borders, and globalization.

This book makes a bold claim that, since around 2015, a new, transnational German cinema has arisen that is aesthetically and politically radical. "Transnational" here denotes not merely international co-productions but extends to theme and form in the films' concerns with movements of people and capital across borders and with globalization. The volume analyzes key films ranging in genre and mode from dramas and comedies, including the "New German Discourse Comedy," to documentaries and installations. The essays illuminate a shift beyond neoliberal stasis and a renewed embrace of political filmmaking that confronts realities of the present.

Analyzing works by a diverse array of filmmakers - including Fatih Akın, Irene von Alberti, Amel Alzakout and Khaled Abdulwahed, Forensic Architecture, Ruth Beckermann, Nils Bökamp, Susanne Heinrich, Gerd Kroske, Burhan Qurbani, Christian Petzold, Mario Pfeifer, Julian Radlmaier, Maria Speth, Tatjana Turanskyj, and Monika Treut - the contributions provide a broad yet in-depth look at contemporary German film. Through formal innovation as well as explicitly political storytelling, this cinema, the essays argue, points beyond political crises, social precarity, and the impasses of the present, sometimes with imagination and fantasy and often by embracing collectivity and resistance.

Edited by Claudia Breger and Olivia Landry. Contributors: Hester Baer, Angelica Fenner, Randall Halle, Lutz Koepnick, Angelos Koutsourakis, Richard Langston, Priscilla Layne, Ervin Malakaj, Gozde Naiboglu, and Fatima Naqvi.

Acknowledgments
IntroductionClaudia Breger and Olivia Landry
Part I. Radical Pessimism as a Form of Resistance: Political Drama in the Age of Surplus Humanity and New Fascism
1. Transit (2018) and PostfascismAngelos Koutsourakis
2. "Her mit dem schönen Leben": Happiness and Access in Berlin Alexanderplatz (2020)Priscilla Layne
3. Negative Futurability and the Politics of Pessimism in Fatih Akın's Aus dem Nichts (2017)Gozde Naiboglu
Part II. Rethinking the Evidence: New Documentary Forms
4. Forensic FallaciesLutz Koepnick
5. The Border as Abjecting Apparatus: Shipwreck at the Threshold of Europe, Lesvos, Aegean Sea (2020) and Purple Sea (2019)Randall Halle
6. The Politics of the Machinic Voice in Gerd Kroske's Documentary SPK Komplex (2018)Olivia Landry
Part III. Reassembling the Archives of Radical Filmmaking
7. Marking Time after UtopiaRichard Langston
8. Remediations of Cinefeminism in Contemporary German FilmHester Baer
9. A Few Takes toward Reassembling (the Dream of) the People: Julian Radlmaier's Selbstkritik eines bürgerlichen Hundes (2017)Claudia Breger
Part IV. Intimate Connections: Aesthetics and Politics of a Cinema of Relations
10. Choric Configurations and the Collective: Ruth Beckermann's FilmsFatima Naqvi
11. Aerial Aesthetics, Queer Intimacy, and the Politics of Repose in the Cinema of Nils Bökamp and Monika TreutErvin Malakaj
12. Between Observational Detachment and Affective Attachment: The Posthumanist Pedagogy of Herr Bachmann und seine Klasse (2021)Angelica Fenner
Notes on the Contributors
Index