Schroeter had also worked in film as a producer, cinematographer, editor and actor. As an actor, he appeared in several films directed by his friend Rainer Werner Fassbinder, including "Beware of a Holy Whore" (1971), and a number of theatre productions. During the second half of the 1980s, Schroeter became widely known as a theater and opera director both in Germany and abroad, returning to filmmaking in 1990 with "Malina", a literary adaptation starring Isabelle Huppert based on Ingeborg Bachmann's novel. The film won the German Film Award in Gold. "Deux" also stars (and was written for) Huppert and premiered at Cannes in 2002, but did not get German distribution.