As if it were ‘fate’

‘So much for “fate”’ paints a relentless portrait of a working-class family in Berlin’s Märkisches Viertel: Irene Rakowitz is getting a divorce after 20 years of marriage and lives with two of her four children, whilst her ex-husband lives just a few floors below. Rather than detached observation, Reidemeister opts for a method of revelatory intervention: she asks questions, provokes, intervenes from off-screen in the conflict-ridden events and allows the family to voice what would otherwise remain unspoken. Here, the family hardly appears as a private refuge – rather, social contradictions are laid bare through family controversies: unpaid reproductive labour, an unattainable family ideology, and the constraints of roles as mother, wife and housewife. In 1979, the film sparked the longest audience discussion in the festival’s history to date in Duisburg – a heated debate about documentary methods and the accusation of a lack of objective distance. (df)