After directing his second opera "We Come to the River" in 1976, Schlöndorff followed "The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum" with the equally political "Coup de Grâce" (1976). Based on a novel by French author Marguerite Yourcenar, the film stars von Trotta (who again co-wrote the script) as Sophie von Reval, a young left-wing aristocrat who sides with the Bolshevik Revolution after being rejected by a young German soldier preparing to fight the Red Army in 1919. The film depicts the same time period and subject matter that von Trotta would later revisit in the film "Rosa Luxemburg" (1986).