Migration Cinema in Higher Education: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) and Contemporary Student Perspectives

Within the context of the Erasmus+ KA220 project MigraMedia, “Migration Narratives in European Media: Teaching, Learning, and Reflecting,” the authors of this essay collaborated to assess the impact of a migration film on higher education students. They chose Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Angst essen Seele auf (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, 1974) due to its artistic significance and unique treatment of the migrant experience, combining modernist aesthetics and melodramatic narrative elements. To assess the film’s impact on contemporary students, they asked Greek undergraduate students in a film course, coming from various humanities departments, to write short papers about the film and submit a survey. The students’ responses indicated that a powerful migration film from a different period, such as Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, can be beneficial in today’s classrooms and can serve as a tool for broadening students’ social and critical awareness. The essay first discusses the film and its historical context and then presents and comments on the students’ perspectives.