Class Relations: Diagnoses of the Present in the Films of Julian Radlmaier and Max Linz

Abstract

AbstractThis article examines the work of Max Linz and Julian Radlmaier, two German directors born in the mid-1980s. It traces their academic and practical training in film studies and film directing and highlights their aesthetic and political approach as an attempt to counter the cinema of the Berlin School. Amalgamating various German and international influences, from Christoph Schlingensief, Alexander Kluge, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Linz) to Roberto Rossellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and the classical avant-gardes of the 1920s (Radlmaier), their student shorts and feature films combine a playful eclecticism with an acute sense of contemporary political issues like precarious working conditions, gentrification, and the commodification of art and culture.