The film was shot in just under two weeks, and was planned as an exercise in film-making for Fassbinder, to fill in the time in his schedule between the work on two other films, Martha and Effi Briest.[1]
Ali is played by El Hedi ben Salem, who was Fassbinder's partner at the time. Fassbinder has a cameo appearance as Emmi's son in law. Irm Hermann, who plays Emmi's daughter Krista, had a turbulent relationship with Fassbinder in real life, having been quoted as saying of Fassbinder, "He couldn't conceive of my refusing him, and he tried everything. He almost beat me to death on the streets of Bochum ....".[2] And Fassbinder grew up under some of the domestic effects of immigrant prejudice, given that his mother immigrated back to Germany from Poland after the Soviet Occupation and Fassbinder grew up in a turbulent and eventually divorcing household where immigrating relatives stayed with them.[3][4]
The original German title Angst essen Seele auf is deliberately grammatically incorrect, translating literally as "Fear eat soul up." The correct German form would be "Angst isst die Seele auf" – which (without the definite article "die") became the title of a related 2002 short film also starring Mira. The title is one of the things Ali tells Emmi. As an immigrant, he speaks in what can be referred to as "broken German" consistently throughout the film. The line of dialogue he utters is simply "Fear eat soul up." Since Ali's poor German grammar is translated literally in the film's English subtitles, the subtitles for Ali's dialogue are similarly riddled with grammatical errors.
Ali is in part an homage to the films of Douglas Sirk, in particular Imitation of Life (1959) and All That Heaven Allows (1955). The most overt homage is the scene in which Emmi's son kicks in the television (an important symbol in All That Heaven Allows) after finding out that his mother has married a north African.[5]
