Von Trotta relocated to Paris in the 1960s, where she worked for film collectives, collaborating on scripts and co-directing short films. In her early career, von Trotta was an actress, appearing in the early films of directors
Rainer Werner Fassbinder and
Volker Schlöndorff. In one of many interviews, von Trotta said: "I came from Germany before the New Wave, so we had all these silly movies. Cinema for me was entertainment, but it was not art. When I came to Paris, I saw several films of
Ingmar Bergman, and all of the sudden I understood what cinema could be. I saw the films of
Alfred Hitchcock and the
French Nouvelle Vague. I stood there and said, 'that is what I'd like to do with my life.' But that was 1962, and you couldn't think that a woman could be a director. In a way, as an unconscious act, I started acting and when the New German films started, I tried to get in through acting." Through her acting career, von Trotta was able to create an initial name for herself before becoming a director. Within this first film of von Trotta's, one can see the conflict "between the personal and the public" that resonates throughout her early film career. Trotta's first solo film was
The Second Awakening of Christa Klages (
Das zweite Erwachen der Christa Klages) in 1978, which focused on "a young woman's political radicalization." She is a professor of film at the
European Graduate School in
Saas-Fee and remains an important personality of German cinema.
The Sister Films Margarethe von Trotta's second feature film was
Sisters, or the Balance of Happiness (
Schwestern oder die Balance des Glücks, 1979). Unintentionally, she created a "trilogy of sister films" with her succeeding works:
Marianne and Juliane (
Die Bleierne Zeit, 1981) and
Three Sisters (
Fürchten und Lieben, 1988). Barbara Quart, author of the book
Women Directors, commented on the three works: "It is the quest for wholeness that is the preoccupation of von Trotta's entire sister series." The women in these films are born into a traditional time (late 1940s and '50s), but they reject the positions that society has established for women.
Marianne and Juliane (also known in English as
The German Sisters) (1981) also deals with losing a sister and learning how to handle the grief. In this film, it is predominantly the Nazi era that influences Marianne and Juliane, albeit in different ways.A theme within
Marianne and Juliane that von Trotta uses throughout her works is that of "the personal is political". In Marianne's jail cell, the sisters come to terms with "their personal and political differences". This film won the AGIS Award, FIPRESCI Prize,
Golden Lion Award, New Cinema Award, and OCIC Award at the
Venice Film Festival in 1981, along with a few more listed in the awards section. This film was nominated for the
Palme d'Or Award at the
Cannes Film Festival in 1988. Within this story, once again, women's feelings are investigated through the friendship between two females, Ruth and Olga.
Rosa Luxemburg was nominated for the
Palme d'Or at
Cannes Film Festival in 1986. This film won the Guild Film Award-Gold at the Guild of German Art House Cinemas in German Film in 1987. There are three overlapping familial connections involving "mother-daughter relationships" within the story: "the bond between Hannah, a first-generation Jewish American, and her mother Ruth"; "the...mother-daughter bond between Ruth and her Jewish mother Miriam"; "and...the central relationship between surrogate mother Lena von Eschenbach/Fisher and Ruth." In this, the definition of a mother is stretched from the "biological" standpoint to the "symbolic." Again, a deep bond is witnessed in this story, as in the rest of von Trotta's films, between Hildegard and a young nun, Richardis. Continuing with the interview, von Trotta says, "It's not a lesbian love! At one point she [Hildegard] says, ‘She is my mother and I'm her mother, I'm her daughter and she's my daughter.’ Hildegard couldn't have children, so in a way Richardis is her daughter and friend and mother [all at once]; it's a very deep love."
Hannah Arendt Hannah Arendt (2012) portrays an important segment in the life of the German-Jewish academic
Hannah Arendt. In an interview with Thilo Wydra, von Trotta is asked if Arendt is similar to the women she has portrayed in past films. Von Trotta replies with an explanation about how real-life characters from her past films,
Rosa Luxemburg and
Die bleierne Zeit (
Marianne and Juliane), fought and died for causes they found to be right: Luxemburg wanted more equality in her community, and
Gudrun Ensslin (Marianne) wanted to revolutionize humanity. Von Trotta says, "Hannah Arendt is a woman who fits into my personal mold of historically important women that I have portrayed in my films. ‘I want to understand,’ was one of her guiding principles. I feel that applies to myself and my films as well.
Television work The common problem that filmmakers run into is budget issues and where they get their funds; during the mid-eighties, many films went under due to money cuts by the "German subvention system." Several of von Trotta's fellow women filmmakers took the safe route and went into the education field in media. But not Margarethe von Trotta—to stay in the game, she accepted proposals for TV pieces, even if it meant losing a bit of her artistic allowances. Her first piece for television was '
(1997), which was the first time she did not compose the screenplay for a work she was directing. She followed this with three more TV films: ' (1997), '
(1997), and ' (2000). Through her experience of working in television, von Trotta learned how to try to hold on to her stamp as an "independent filmmaker" in terms of keeping her artistic approach. == Personal life ==