The simultaneous international success in the 1970s of such filmmakers as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders led critics to talk of a 'New German Cinema'. Thomas Elsaesser's book is the most comprehensive and illuminating study yet produced about this major movement in world cinema.

Comprising a discussion of 'Alice in the Cities', 'The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant', 'Heimat' and 'The American Friend', Julia Knight's study examines the American dominance of German film, the framework of European art cinema and how German cinema engages with contemporary German reality.

In this original study, Scharf investigates issues of national identity in films of the New German Cinema. Using a cultural studies analysis, Scharf argues that the conflict between this generation of critical filmmakers and their ‘German-ness’ translate into feature films that construct, and are pervaded by, a sense of "homelessness" at home. As the first cultural studies investigation of this cinematic movement, the book challenges existing film studies accounts by analyzing the New German Cinema within its social, temporal, and spatial contexts. Furthermore, with its broad concerns for the West German production context, the New German Cinema’s reception both nationally and internationally, as well as issues of representation, narration, and ‘Othering,’ Nation and Identity in the New German Cinema offers an interdisciplinary contribution to the ongoing debate on national cinema.

This anthology offers an account of German cinema in the fifties, focusing on popular genres, famous stars and dominant practices, taking into account the complicated relationships between East and West Germany, and by paying attention to the economic and political conditions of film production and reception during this period.