The two main people in the story are Anna, a young girl, who is thought of having the ability to heal people mysteriously. Elisabeth is a young - middle aged aristocratic woman, that is disabled and puts all her hopes in meeting Anna and having her disability heal by her. A strange ambivalent relationship develops between the two women.
In this portrait film, we meet Inger Christensen in her apartment in Østerbro, Copenhagen, where she tells of her life and work, and reads excerpts from her major works.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder was probably Germany’s most significant post-war director. His swift and dramatic demise at the early age of 37 in 1982 left behind a vacuum in European filmmaking that has yet to be filled, as well as a body of unique, multi-layered and multifarious work of astonishing consistency and rigour. From 1969 onwards, Danish director and film historian Christian Braad Thomsen maintained a close yet respectfully distanced friendship with Fassbinder. Fassbinder – Lieben ohne zu fordern is based on his personal memories as well as a series of conversations and interviews he held with Fassbinder and his mother Lilo in the 1970s.
A stream of associative patterns is woven into the many ambiguous meanings of the river image. There are cracks to blind areas of loss and oblivion, world fires and floods - and to an oasis of dreams, fantasies and myths. Images materialize in the borderline between mind and world.
