Jean-Marie Straub (1933–2022) and Danièle Huillet (1936–2006) met in the 1950s. Refusing conscription for the Algerian War, the two moved to Germany, where they made Not Reconciled — adapted from a novel by Heinrich Böll — and The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, among other works. After 1969 they settled in Rome and continued to direct films that overturned mainstream modes of cinematic representation, drawing on classic works of art and contemporary texts of resistance by figures such as Franz Kafka, Hölderlin, Corneille, Brecht, and Schoenberg.
