# Wim Wenders

Ernst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders (German:; born 14 August 1945) is a German filmmaker and photographer, who is a major figure in New German Cinema. Among the honors he has received are prizes from the Cannes, Venice, and Berlin film festivals. He has also received a BAFTA Award and been nominated for four Academy Awards and a Grammy Award.
Wenders made his feature film debut with Summer in the City (1970). He earned critical acclaim for directing the films Alice in the Cities (1974), The Wrong Move (1975), and Kings of the Road (1976), later known as the Road Movie trilogy. Wenders won the BAFTA Award for Best Direction and the Palme d'Or for Paris, Texas (1984) and the Cannes Film Festival Best Director Award for Wings of Desire (1987). His other notable films include The American Friend (1977), Faraway, So Close! (1993), and Perfect Days (2023).
Wenders has received three nominations for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature: for Buena Vista Social Club (1999), Pina (2011), and The Salt of the Earth (2014). He received a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Long Form Music Video for Willie Nelson at the Teatro (1998). He is also known for directing the documentaries Tokyo-Ga (1985), The Soul of a Man (2003), Pope Francis: A Man of His Word (2018), and Anselm (2023).
Wenders formerly served as the president of the European Film Academy from 1996–2020. He also earned an Honorary Golden Bear in 2015. He is an active photographer, emphasizing images of desolate landscapes. He is considered an auteur director.

## Early life and education

Wenders was born in Düsseldorf into a traditionally Catholic family. His father, Heinrich Wenders, was a surgeon. The Dutch name "Wim" is a shortened version of the baptismal name "Wilhelm". As a boy, Wenders took unaccompanied trips to Amsterdam to visit the Rijksmuseum. He graduated from high school in Oberhausen in the Ruhr area. He then studied medicine at the University of Freiburg (1963–64) and philosophy at the University of Dusseldorf (1964–65), but dropped out and moved to Paris in October 1966 in order to become a painter. He failed his entry test at France's national film school, IDHEC (now La Fémis), and instead became an engraver at Johnny Friedlaender's studio in Montparnasse. During this time he became fascinated with cinema, and saw up to five movies a day at the local movie theater.
Set on making his obsession his life's work, he returned to Germany in 1967 to work in the Düsseldorf office of United Artists. That fall, he entered the University of Television and Film Munich (HFF). Between 1967 and 1970, while at the HFF, he also worked as a film critic for FilmKritik, the Munich daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, Twen magazine, and Der Spiegel.
Wenders completed several short films before graduating from the Hochschule with a 16mm black-and-white film, Summer in the City (1970), his feature directorial debut.

## Career
### 1970–1976: Film debut and early work

Wenders's career began in the late 1960s, the New German Cinema era. Much of the distinctive cinematography in his movies is the result of a long-term collaboration with Dutch cinematographer Robby Müller. Wenders made his directorial film debut with Summer in the City (1970), his graduation project at the University of Television and Film Munich, which he attended from 1967 to 1970. Shot in 16 mm black-and-white by Müller, the movie exhibited many of Wenders's later trademark themes of aimless searching, running from invisible demons, and persistent wandering toward an indeterminate goal. Protagonist Hans (Zischler) is released from prison, and after searching through seedy West German streets and bars, he visits an old friend in Berlin.
Wenders then directed The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty, titled The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick in the United States. The film was adapted from Peter Handke's 1970 short novel. He then directed the period drama The Scarlet Letter (1973), adapted from Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel of the same name. From 1974 to 1976 Wender directed the Road Movie trilogy. The first film in the trilogy was Alice in the Cities (1974), which was shot in 16mm. The last two films are The Wrong Move (1975) and Kings of the Road (1976), the latter of which won the FIPRESCI Prize at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival.

### 1977–1987: Breakthrough and acclaim

In 1977 Wenders gained prominence for directing the neo-noir The American Friend, starring Dennis Hopper and Bruno Ganz. The film is adapted from the Patricia Highsmith 1974 novel Ripley's Game. J. Hoberman of The New York Times has compared the film to Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, writing, "Like Taxi Driver, The American Friend was a new sort of movie-movie—sleekly brooding, voluptuously alienated and saturated with cinephilia."
Wenders earned critical acclaim for his road drama Paris, Texas (1984), starring Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski and Dean Stockwell. The film premiered at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d'Or. Critic Roger Ebert wrote of the film, "[it's] a movie with the kind of passion and willingness to experiment that was more common fifteen years ago than it is now. It has more links with films like Five Easy Pieces and Easy Rider and Midnight Cowboy than with the slick arcade games that are the box-office winners of the 1980s. It is true, deep, and brilliant".
Wenders then directed the romance fantasy Wings of Desire (1987), starring Bruno Ganz and Peter Falk. It premiered at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival, where Wenders won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Director. Peter Handke co-wrote the screenplay. West Germany submitted Wings of Desire for consideration for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, a bid supported by its distribution company. It was not nominated; the academy seldom recognized West German cinema. The film was one of the most acclaimed films of the year, with many critics adding it on their top 10 lists.

### 1991–2010: Career fluctuations

In 1991 Wenders directed the science fiction adventure drama Until the End of the World, starring William Hurt, Solveig Dommartin, Max Von Sydow and Jeanne Moreau. The film has been released in several editions, ranging in length from 158 to 287 minutes, with the longer versions receiving mixed reviews. In 1993 he directed Faraway, So Close!, a sequel to Wings of Desire. Actors Otto Sander, Bruno Ganz and Peter Falk reprised their roles as angels who have become human. The film also stars Nastassja Kinski, Willem Dafoe and Heinz Rühmann, in his last film role. It received critical acclaim, premiering at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival, where it earned the Grand Prix. The next year, he directed Lisbon Story, which screened at Un Certain Regard at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival. In 1995 he directed both A Trick of Light and the anthology film Lumière and Company.
In 1997, Wenders directed the American drama film The End of Violence, starring Bill Pullman, Andie MacDowell, and Gabriel Byrne. The film received negative reviews and performed poorly at the box office after its debut at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival. Like many other of Wenders's American movies, it was shot in multiple locations, including the Griffith Observatory and the Santa Monica Pier. Wenders has directed several highly acclaimed documentaries, including Willie Nelson at the Teatro, a documentary about the recording sessions of Teatro (1998). The next year he directed Buena Vista Social Club, about the music of Cuba. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. In 2002, he directed a documentary about the German rock group BAP called Vill passiert (A lot has happened).

### 2011–present: Resurgence with documentaries

Wenders has directed music videos for groups such as U2 and Talking Heads, including "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)" and "Sax and Violins". His television commercials include a UK advertisement for Carling Premier Canadian beer. Wenders's book Emotion Pictures, a collection of diary essays written as a film student, was adapted and broadcast as a series of plays on BBC Radio 3, featuring Peter Capaldi as Wenders, with Gina McKee, Saskia Reeves, Dennis Hopper, Harry Dean Stanton and Ricky Tomlinson, dramatized by Neil Cargill.
Wenders also directed a documentary-style film on the Skladanowsky brothers, known in English as A Trick of the Light. The Skladanowsky brothers were inventing "moving pictures" when several others like the Lumière brothers and William Friese-Greene were doing the same. In 2011, Wenders was selected to stage the 2013 cycle of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Bayreuth Festival. The project fell through when he insisted on filming in 3-D, which the Wagner family found too costly and disruptive. In 2012, while promoting his 3-D dance film Pina, Wenders told the Documentary channel blog that he had begun work on a new 3-D documentary about architecture. He also said he would only work in 3-D from then on. Wenders had admired the dance choreographer Pina Bausch since 1985, but only with the advent of digital 3-D cinema did he decide that he could sufficiently capture her work on screen.
In 2015, Wenders collaborated with artist/journalist and longtime friend Melinda Camber Porter on a documentary feature about his body of work, Wim Wenders – Visions on Film. Porter died before it was finished, and the film remains incomplete. Wenders is a member of the advisory board of World Cinema Foundation. The project was founded by Martin Scorsese and aims to find and reconstruct world cinema films that have been neglected. As of 2015 he served as a Jury Member for the digital studio Filmaka, a platform for undiscovered filmmakers to show their work to industry professionals.
In June 2017, Wenders stage-directed Georges Bizet's opera Les Pêcheurs de perles, starring Olga Peretyatko and Francesco Demuro and conducted by Daniel Barenboim at the Berlin State Opera (Staatsoper). In a 2018 interview, he said his favorite movie of all time was his film about Pope Francis, and that his entire career had been building up to it. His admiration for Francis is profound; he said he felt Francis is doing his best in a world full of calamities. He also said that, though raised Catholic, he had converted to Protestantism years earlier.
In 2019 Wenders acted as executive producer for his former assistant director Luca Lucchesi's documentary A Black Jesus, which has similar themes to Pope Francis: A Man of His Word. The film explores the role of religion in communal identity and how this can create or dissolve differences in a small Sicilian town during the height of the refugee crisis. Lucchesi noted that Wenders pushed the film to be more symbolic and philosophical, saying that Wenders wanted the film to have a "universal fairy-tale aspect" and to represent "Europe in a nutshell".

## Photography

Wenders has worked with photographic images of desolate landscapes and themes of memory, time, loss, nostalgia and movement. He began his long-running project "Pictures from the Surface of the Earth" in the early 1980s and pursued it for 20 years. The initial photographic series was titled "Written in the West" and was produced while Wenders criss-crossed the American West in preparation for his film Paris, Texas (1984). It became the starting point for a nomadic journey across the globe, including Germany, Australia, Cuba, Israel and Japan, to take photographs capturing the essence of a moment, place or space.

## Personal life

Wenders lives and works in Berlin with his wife, Donata. He has lived in Berlin since the mid-1970s. He is an ecumenical Christian; as a teenager he wished to become a Catholic priest. He supports German football club Borussia Dortmund.
In 2009, Wenders signed a petition in support of director Roman Polanski, who had been detained while traveling to a film festival in relation to his 1977 sexual abuse charges, which the petition argued would undermine the tradition of film festivals as a place for works to be shown "freely and safely" and argued that arresting filmmakers traveling to neutral countries could open the door to "actions of which no-one can know the effects."
From 1979 to 1981, Wenders was married to the American actress and singer-songwriter Ronee Blakley.

## Filmography
### Film

Short film
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer | Notes |
| 1967 | Scenary' | Yes | Yes | Yes | Also cinematographer and editor |
| 1968 | Same Player Shoots Again | Yes | Yes | Yes | Also cinematographer and editor |
| 1968 | Blurb Film | Yes | No | No | Co-directed with Gerhard Theuring |
| 1968 | Victor I. | Yes | No | No | |
| 1969 | Alabama (2000 Light Years) | Yes | Yes | No | Also editor and sound |
| 1992 | Arisha, the Bear, and the Stone Ring | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 1995 | Segment 38 | Yes | No | No | Segment of Lumière et compagnie |
| 2002 | Twelve Miles to Trona | Yes | Yes | No | Segment from Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet |
| 2003 | Other Side of the Road | Yes | No | No | |
| 2007 | War in Peace | Yes | Yes | No | Segment of To Each His Own Cinema |
| 2008 | Person to Person | Yes | Yes | No | Segment of 8 |
| 2012 | Ver ou Não Ver | Yes | Yes | No | Segment of Mundo Invisível |
| 2010 | If Buildings Could Talk | Yes | Yes | No | |
| 2015 | Two or Three Thoughts on Edward Hopper | Yes | Yes | Yes | Also executive producer |
| 2019 | (E)motion | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
Feature film
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer |
| 1970 | Summer in the City | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1972 | The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1973 | The Scarlet Letter | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1974 | Alice in the Cities | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1975 | The Wrong Move | Yes | No | Uncredited |
| 1976 | Kings of the Road | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1977 | The American Friend | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1982 | Hammett | Yes | No | No |
| 1982 | The State of Things | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1984 | Paris, Texas | Yes | No | No |
| 1987 | Wings of Desire | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1991 | Until the End of the World | Yes | Yes | Co-producer |
| 1993 | Faraway, So Close! | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1994 | Lisbon Story | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1995 | Beyond the Clouds | Partial | Yes | No |
| 1997 | The End of Violence | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 2000 | The Million Dollar Hotel | Yes | No | Yes |
| 2004 | Land of Plenty | Yes | Yes | No |
| 2005 | Don't Come Knocking | Yes | Yes | Executive |
| 2008 | Palermo Shooting | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 2015 | Every Thing Will Be Fine | Yes | No | No |
| 2016 | The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez | Yes | Yes | No |
| 2017 | Submergence | Yes | No | No |
| 2023 | Perfect Days | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Producer only The Left-Handed Woman (1977) Radio On (1979) (Associate producer) ...als diesel geboren (1979) Iron Earth, Copper Sky (1987) The Absence (1992) (Co-producer) Go for Gold! (1997) Half the Rent (2002) Junimond (2002) Fools (2003) Egoshooter (2004) A Black Jesus (2018) Souad (2021) (Co-producer) An Endless Sunday (2023) | Executive producer only La torcedura (2004) Música cubana (2004) The House Is Burning (2006) The Clone Returns Home (2008) The Open Road (2009) Au Revoir, Taipei (2010) Sing Me the Songs That Say I Love You: A Concert for Kate McGarrigle (2012) Our Last Tango (2015) National Bird (2016) Little Hands (2017) It Must Schwing: The Blue Note Story (2018) Waiting for the Miracle to Come (2018) Karen Dalton: In My Own Time (2020) United States vs. Reality Winner (2021) |

### Documentary works

Short film
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer | Notes |
| 1969 | Silver City Revisited | Yes | Yes | Yes | Also cinematographer and editor |
| 1982 | Reverse Angle | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 2007 | Invisible Crimes | Yes | Yes | No | Segment of Invisibles |
| 2010 | If Buildings Could Talk | Yes | Yes | No | |
| 2010 | Il volo | Yes | Yes | No | |
| 2014 | The Berlin Philharmonic | Yes | Yes | No | Segment of Cathedrals of Culture |
| 2022 | Présence | Yes | Yes | Executive | |
| 2023 | Somebody Comes Into the Light | Yes | No | Yes | |
Film
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer | Notes |
| 1980 | Lightning Over Water | Yes | Yes | Yes | Co-directed by Nicholas Ray; Also editor |
| 1985 | Tokyo-Ga | Yes | Yes | Yes | Also editor and narrator |
| 1989 | Notebook on Cities and Clothes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Also cinematographer and narrator |
| 1995 | A Trick of Light | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 1998 | Willie Nelson at the Teatro | Yes | Yes | No | |
| 1999 | Buena Vista Social Club | Yes | Yes | No | |
| 2002 | Ode to Cologne: A Rock 'N' Roll Film | Yes | Yes | No | |
| 2003 | The Soul of a Man | Yes | Yes | No | |
| 2011 | Pina | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 2014 | The Salt of the Earth | Yes | Yes | Executive | Co-directed with Juliano Ribeiro Salgado |
| 2018 | Pope Francis: A Man of His Word | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 2023 | Anselm | Yes | No | Yes | |
| TBA | The Secrets of Places | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
TV movies
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer |
| 1969 | Kaspar Hauser | Yes | No | No |
| 1982 | Room 666 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
TV series
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Notes |
| 1977 | A House for Us | Yes | No | 2 episodes |
| 2020 | 4 Walls Berlin | Yes | Yes | Episode "Change" |

### Television

TV shorts
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer | Notes |
| 1969 | Police Film | Yes | Yes | Yes | Also cinematographer and editor |
| 1969 | 3 Americans LPS | Yes | No | No | Also editor |

### Music video

| Year | Title | Artist |
| 1990 | "Night and Day" | U2 |
| 1992 | "Sax and Violins" | Talking Heads |
| 1993 | "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)" | U2 |
| 1997 | "Every Time I Try" | Spain |
| 2000 | "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" | U2 |
| 2000 | "Warum werde ich nicht satt?" | Die Toten Hosen |
| 2001 | "Souljacker Part I" | Eels |
| 2002 | "Live in a Hiding Place" | Idlewild |
| 2009 | "Auflösen" | Die Toten Hosen |
| 2020 | "Anagnorisis" | Asaf Avidan |

### Commercials

| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Subject |
| 2000 | "Un matin partout dans le monde" | Yes | Yes | JCDecaux |
| 2009 | "My Point of View" | Yes | Yes | Leica |
| 2017–2018 | Jil Sander: Spring/Summer 2018 | Yes | Yes | Jil Sander |
| 2021 | A Future Together | Yes | No | Salvatore Frengasso |

## Legacy and honors

| Year | Association | Category | Nominated work | Result | Ref. |
| 2000 | Academy Awards | Best Documentary Feature Film | Buena Vista Social Club | Nominated | |
| 2012 | Academy Awards | Best Documentary Feature Film | Pina | Nominated | |
| 2015 | Academy Awards | Best Documentary Feature Film | The Salt of the Earth | Nominated | |
| 2024 | Academy Awards | Best International Feature Film | Perfect Days | Nominated | |
| 2023 | Asia Pacific Screen Awards | Best Feature Film | Perfect Days | Won | |
| 2024 | Asian Film Awards | Best Film | Perfect Days | Nominated | [69] [70] |
| 1987 | Bavarian Film Awards | Best Director | Wings of Desire | Won | |
| 1993 | Bavarian Film Awards | Best Director | Faraway, So Close! | Won | |
| 1988 | Belgian Film Critics Association | Grand Prix | Wings of Desire | Won | |
| 2024 | Belgian Film Critics Association | Grand Prix | Perfect Days | Nominated | |
| 2015 | Berlin International Film Festival | Honorary Golden Bear | — | Won | |
| 1985 | British Academy Film Awards | Best Direction | Paris, Texas | Won | |
| 1989 | British Academy Film Awards | Best Film Not in the English Language | Wings of Desire | Nominated | |
| 2000 | British Academy Film Awards | Best Film Not in the English Language | Buena Visa Social Club | Nominated | |
| 2012 | British Academy Film Awards | Best Film Not in the English Language | Pina | Nominated | |
| 1984 | Cannes Film Festival | Palme d'Or | Paris, Texas | Won | |
| 1987 | Cannes Film Festival | Best Director | Wings of Desire | Won | |
| 1993 | Cannes Film Festival | Grand Prix | Faraway, So Close! | Won | |
| 1978 | César Awards | Best Foreign Film | The American Friend | Nominated | |
| 1985 | César Awards | Best Foreign Film | Paris, Texas | Nominated | |
| 1988 | César Awards | Best Foreign Film | Wings of Desire | Nominated | |
| 2015 | César Awards | Best Documentary Film | The Salt of the Earth | Won | |
| 2024 | César Awards | Best Foreign Film | Perfect Days | Nominated | |
| 1985 | David di Donatello | Best Foreign Film | Paris, Texas | Nominated | |
| 2015 | David di Donatello | Best Foreign Film | The Salt of the Earth | Nominated | |
| 1988 | European Film Awards | European Film | Wings of Desire | Nominated | |
| 1988 | European Film Awards | European Director | Wings of Desire | Won | |
| 1999 | European Film Awards | European Documentary | Buena Visa Social Club | Won | |
| 2005 | European Film Awards | European Director | Don't Come Knocking | Nominated | |
| 2011 | European Film Awards | European Documentary | Pina | Won | |
| 2024 | European Film Awards | Lifetime Achievement Award | — | Honored | |
| 2017 | Filmfest Hamburg | Douglas Sirk Award | — | Won | |
| 2001 | Grammy Awards | Best Long Form Music Video | Teatro (Video) | Nominated | |
| 2004 | International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg | Master of Cinema Award | — | Won | |
| 2024 | Japan Academy Film Prize | Director of the Year | Perfect Days | Won | |
| 2005 | Locarno Film Festival | Leopard of Honour | — | Won | |
| 1982 | Venice Film Festival | Golden Lion | The State of Things | Won | |
| 2012 | Writers Guild of America Awards | Best Documentary Screenplay | Pina | Nominated | |
Wenders has been awarded honorary doctorates by the Sorbonne in Paris in 1989, the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) in 1995, and the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium, in 2005. The Wim Wenders Foundation was established in Düsseldorf in 2012. It provides a framework to bring together his cinematic, photographic, artistic and literary works in his native country and make them permanently accessible to the public. In 2016, he received the Großer Kulturpreis of the Sparkassen Culture-Foundation Rhineland.

## Exhibitions

1986–1992
* Written in the West, in conjunction with the publication, Written in the West, Munich: Schirmer/Mosel (1987)
1993–1995
* Wim Wenders Photo Exhibition, in conjunction with the publication, Once, Munich: Schirmer/ Mosel (2001)
2004
* Pictures from the Surface of the Earth, Australia and Japan, James Cohan Gallery, New York
* Between The Lines, group exhibition, James Cohan Gallery, New York
2006
* Wim Wenders: Immagini dal pianeta terra, Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome, Italy
* Journey to Onomichi – Photos by Wim and Donata Wenders, Omotesando Hills, Tokyo, Japan
2011
* Places, strange and quiet, Haunch of Venison, London, UK
2012
* Places Strange and Quiet, Ostlicht. Galerie Für Fotografie, Vienna, AT
* Places, strange and quiet, Harald Falckenberg Exhibition Space, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, DE
* Wim Wenders: Pictures from the Surface of the Earth, Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, RU
2014
* Wim Wenders: Places Strange & Quiet, GL Strand, Copenhagen, DK
* Wim Wenders: Urban Solitude, Palazzo Incontro, Rome, IT
2015
* Wim Wenders: America, Villa e collezione la Panza, Varese, IT
* "In broad daylight even the sounds shine. Wim Wenders scouting in Portugal", curated by Anna Duque y González and Laura Schmidt Reservatório da Mãe d'Água das Amoreiras, Lisbon
2016
* "The Space Between the Characters Can Carry the Load", Collection Ivo Wessel, Weserburg Museum for modern Art, Bremen, DE
2017/2018
* "Instant Stories/Wim Wenders' Polaroids", The Photographers' Gallery, London, from 20 October 2017 to 11 February 2018.

### Installation art

2019
* (E)motion
2020
* Two or Three Things I Know About Edward Hopper
2022
* Presence, with Claudine Drai