Water Drops on Burning Rocks (Tropfen auf heiße Steine)

"There is a light burning."

Leopold brings Franz to his apartment and they have sex. This initially casual encounter turns into a full-blown relationship. Franz leaves his girlfriend Anna and moves in with Leopold. Gradually their love for one another is corroded by the petit bourgeois world around them. Their lust for one another wanes, false power games destroy their sense of trust, and they use each another to make their own pain more bearable. Leopold and Franz fall into a spiral of ignominy, self-absorption and shame. Finally Anna wants to win back Franz, while Leopold brings his ex-girlfriend Vera into play – in the end they all sleep together. The orgy ends tragically. All of them lust for one another, but nobody ends up happy.
 
Rainer Werner Fassbinder, born in 1945 in Bavaria, is one of the most important representatives of New German Cinema. To this day, his films are still shown at festivals worldwide, his plays are regularly performed in German theatres, and museums dedicate retrospectives to his work. In 1964, at the age of 19, he wrote his second play Tropfen auf heiße Steine, which remained unperformed until his death in 1982. In 2000, the French director François Ozon turned the play into a film entitled Gouttes d’eau sur pierres brulantes.

The production Water Drops on Burning Rocks (Tropfen auf heiße Steine) was selected for the radikal jung 2018 festival.