Helma Sanders is one of Germany's leading women filmmakers. Her seventh film, Beach Under the Sidewalk is about young theatre actors in Berlin who participated in the radical movement in 1968, but who don't know exactly how to lead their lives in the 1970s. The lead couple is from Berlin's Schaubuehne am Halleschen Ufer Ensemble, whose performance of Euripides' “The Bacchae” was singled out as the 1974 Play of the Year. According to critic Ron Holloway: “The richness of the film is in the reflective process of the improvised dialogue, each patiently constructed to build on the previous experience and deepen the relationship between two people badly in need of each other's company. Sanders maintains a sharp political awareness of Berlin (and West German) student life, while probing the structure of society to find some immediate answers to the Left's intellectual dilemma.”