Ain't Nothin' Without You

Director: Pia Frankenberg

1985 / 91min / DCP

A screwball comedy shrewdly observing the manners, mating habits, and class hang-ups of upwardly mobile 1980s West Germany, Ain’t Nothin’ Without You stars director Frankenberg as Martha, a filmmaker and single mother wracked with guilt over her background of privilege, and Klaus Bueb as Alfred, a child of ’68 radicalism who has spent years stalled in his architecture studies, working on the side as a film studio tour guide. Falling in love after a meet-cute on Hamburg’s frozen-over Alster Lake, the odd couple begin a lively back-and-forth on most every hot button topic du jour, while also negotiating the complications that arise when Martha decides to cohabit with the family of her Portuguese nanny.

Q&A with director Pia Frankenberg moderated by curator of the Deutsche Kinemathek, Annika Haupts on Saturday, December 14th