One of the titans of radical filmmaking, Jean-Marie Straub has been dynamiting cinematic conventions for more than five decades. In his new feature-length work, Kommunisten, Straub takes a retrospective look back at his past œuvre, and delivers a strident political message for the future.

Opening with strains of the East German national anthem, Kommunisten comprises six "blocs" of cinema. Days of Wrath, a newly filmed adaptation of André Malraux's 1935 novella about a communist militant interrogated by the secret police, is followed by extracts from the earlier films Workers, Peasants (2001), Too Early, Too Late (1982), Fortini/Cani (1976), The Death of Empedocles (1987) and Black Sins (1989).

In all these episodes, we see men and women resisting political tyranny and resolutely hoping for a better world, and the film ends with a touching paean to Danièle Huillet, Straub's partner and co-director until her death in 2006. In Straub/Huillet's hands, the cinema itself is a communist utopia.