Wim Wenders
Authors: Delers Olivier 
Published: September 2024

Wim Wenders is one of the most renowned German filmmakers of his generation. Born in Düsseldorf in 1945, he attended the Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film in Munich between 1967 and 1970. His career is marked by a spirit of collaboration. His first feature, The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick [Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter] (1972), was an adaptation of a novel by Peter Handke and his cinematographer, Robby Müller, is credited with influencing the aesthetics of his early films. The Road Trilogy (Alice in the Cities [Alice in den Städten, 1974]; Wrong Move [Falsche Bewegung, 1975]; and Kings of the Road [Im Lauf der Zeit, 1976]) made Wenders a leading figure of New German Cinema. All three films express feelings of alienation and question German identity in the postwar era. Even though one of his characters famously declares that “the Yankees have colonized our subconscious,” references to American culture and cinema abound in Wenders’s work. After releasing The American Friend (Der amerikanische Freund, 1977), based on a Patricia Highsmith novel, Wenders moved to the United States to work on Hammett (1982), a film produced by Francis Ford Coppola. The experience left him disillusioned with Hollywood and inspired The State of Things (Der Stand der Dinge, 1982), a film that reflects on the financial pressures facing auteur filmmakers. The 1980s were a period of high acclaim for Wenders. Paris, Texas (1984), written with Sam Shepard, received the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin, 1987), another collaboration with Handke, is often considered his masterpiece. These critical successes are framed by two films essays that were difficult to access at the time but that scholars consider as essential reflections on the acts of seeing and image-making: Tokyo-Ga (shot in 1983, released in 1985) and Notebooks on Cities and Clothes (1989). The 1990s marked the beginning of a period of relative critical draught with films that are harder to classify but show the continuity of Wenders’ cinematic vision. The five-hour long Until the End of the World (Bis ans Ende der Welt, 1991) proved to be too ambitious, Faraway, So Close! (In weiter Ferne, so nah!, 1993) too didactic, and the essayistic love tale Lisbon Story (1994) too discombobulated for critics and audiences alike. The quadralogy centered around the city of Los Angeles, composed of The End of Violence (1997), Million Dollar Hotel (2000), Land of Plenty (2004), and Don’t Come Knocking (2005) revisits themes already present in earlier films: characters lost in the vastness of amorphous spaces, the mise en abyme of the Hollywood Western tradition, and the omnipresence of screens in the age of television. Wenders returned to the foreground with Oscar-nominated documentaries Buena Vista Social Club (1999) and The Salt of the Earth (2014). In the 2010s, he turned his attention to 3D filmmaking and explored its potential to convey the emotions of dance (Pina, 2011), psychological drama (Every Thing Will Be Fine, 2015), and theater (The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez, 2016), an adaptation of a play by Handke. In recent years, Wenders’s output has continued to be eclectic with new feature films (Submergence, 2017; Perfect Days, 2023) and documentaries on Pope Francis and Anselm Kiefer. He is also a noted photographer with regular exhibitions all around the world.