In a Year with 13 Moons

In a Year with 13 Moons (In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden, 1978) is a Rainer Werner Fassbinder drama you can watch online on iFILM. It follows the final days of Elvira Weishaupt, a Frankfurt woman who once lived as Erwin, a heavyset slaughterhouse worker. This is the bleakest, most personal thing Fassbinder ever directed.

Years earlier Erwin underwent gender reassignment surgery out of love for a man — a man who then walked away. Now Elvira drifts across the city from one figure to the next: an ex-wife, a daughter, a nun who raised her in an orphanage, a stranger she meets at night. Each encounter peels back another wound. Fassbinder shot the film right after his own lover's suicide, and that grief soaks every frame, from the abattoir scenes to the long, hollow walks down empty corridors.

Volker Spengler carries the lead, and his Elvira ranks among the most defenseless figures in all of 1970s European cinema. Call it what it is: a hard, cruel, at times almost unwatchable picture. For anyone drawn to uncompromising auteur filmmaking, though, it stands at the summit. Stream In a Year with 13 Moons (1978) online on iFILM.