About

Shot while on hiatus from the lengthy production of Effi Briest, the visionary World on a Wire is a two-part dystopian epic made for German television, and Fassbinder's single foray into science-fiction. Anticipating anxieties around virtual reality, it centres on a computer program that simulates an artificial world, created by the Institute for Cybernetics and Future Science. When the scientist responsible for the program goes mad and mysteriously dies, the Institute asks engineer Fred Stiller (Klaus Löwitsch) to take his place. As people and even memories begin to inexplicably vanish, Stiller reluctantly goes in search of answers. The film spirals into a paranoid fever pitch, with the unravelling of a massive corporate conspiracy and the deterioration of Stiller's own sense of what is real and what is a simulation. Evoking the dark, labyrinthine twists of film noirs like Howard Hawk's The Big Sleep, World on a Wire also directly recalls Godard's own sci-fi noir Alphaville in the sleek architecture and design of its modern Paris setting.

Ages 15+