[5] The female characters within the story must occupy suffocating spaces that von Trotta uses to represent the confinement that women are subjected to in a world run by men.

As a director, he was not considered to be very audacious, while von Trotta's strong suit was in how she directed the film's actors "through whom she creates her story".

The couple collaborated on one more film, Coup de Grâce (1976), where von Trotta helped to write but not direct the work, before she branched off into her own career.

Barbara Quart, author of the book Women Directors, commented on the three works: "It is the quest for wholeness that is the preoccupation of von Trotta's entire sister series."

[23] These three films investigate sisterhood and their bonds within a world that is falling apart all around them; this matter places von Trotta's work into New German Cinema.

[6] The siblings are close before Anna commits suicide, but hidden behind her facial expressions is a desire to escape this feeling of frustration between following what she wants and what Maria asks of her.

[23] The characters are based on the real-life Christiane and Gudrun Ensslin, which made "feminist critics" give extra notice to this work in comparison to all other films that von Trotta has done.

Critics question the way von Trotta structured the plot and why she positioned it from that of Christiane's character, Juliane, instead of from Gudrun (Marianne).

The film is characterized by the use of multiple flashback sequences, jumping between present day to childhood and everywhere in between, breaking any chance of a linear structure.

[24] Von Trotta winning the Golden Lion was a true achievement for women in film, for an honor of this stature had not been awarded to a female director since Leni Reifenstahl received "the Mussolini Cup" in 1938 for Olympia.

Compared to the other two preceding films in the "sister series", Love and Fear contains key melodramatic elements that focus on one's feelings and anguish.

[24] Sheer Madness (Heller Wahn, 1983), one of von Trotta's popular feature films, also uses suicide as an important part of the storyline.

An analysis on the film given by authors Susan Linville and Kent Casper reads: "suicidal states of mind may stem not from negative distortions of external reality, but from an accurate assessment of the way things are.

"[23] Von Trotta won the OCIC Award-Honorable Mention at the Berlin International Film Festival in the Forum of New Cinema for Sheer Madness in 1983.

[24] Von Trotta's 1986 eponymous film about the feminist and marxist socialist Rosa Luxemburg examines both her "life as a public revolutionary and her private experience as a woman".

Barbara Sukowa, who stars in several of von Trotta's films, won the Best Actress honors at Cannes in 1986 for her delivery of the main role.

[24] Looking forward to some of von Trotta's more contemporary films, this same idea of female bonds and their emotions is still center stage, such as in her piece from 2003, Rosenstrasse.

"[5] The film Vision (2009) chronicles the true tale of Hildegard von Bingen, a nun who stands for another of von Trotta's independent women protagonists—one who fights the patriarchal society of the church by foregoing the established rules of conduct and, upon learning one of her fellow sisters is with child, asks for a different area for the nuns to call their own.

Von Trotta says, "Hannah Arendt is a woman who fits into my personal mold of historically important women that I have portrayed in my films.

[29] The common problem that filmmakers run into is budget issues and where they get their funds; during the mid-eighties, many films went under due to money cuts by the "German subvention system."

But not Margarethe von Trotta—to stay in the game, she accepted proposals for TV pieces, even if it meant losing a bit of her artistic allowances.

Through her experience of working in television, von Trotta learned how to try to hold on to her stamp as an "independent filmmaker" in terms of keeping her artistic approach.