After German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s play The Garbage, the City and Death was banned from performance in Germany because of its controversial subject matter, Schmid worked on a screen adaptation of the piece with the legendary director and, using actors from his repertory company (including Fassbinder), made the film himself. The story concerns a streetwalker in Frankfurt who is having trouble making ends meet until she falls into the company of a Jewish businessman who opens her eyes. "I’ve always understood it as a strange, sad fairy tale," Schmid has commented. "It’s also a movie about Germany after the Holocaust, and I think the reason Fassbinder wanted me to adapt the play for the screen was that I wasn’t German. He said he was too close to the whole thing."