Wim Wenders

We all come from houses in which we live, dream, love and die. This long-term documentary project explores the significance of architecture in our everyday lives and takes its audience on a journey to the most impressive places designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor.

To mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, Wim Wenders shot a short film that takes us to the most secret place in Europe at that time: a map room in a school in Reims, France, which served as a war room for the Allies. On May 7, 1945, Nazi Germany surrendered there and the world war ended.

Hirayama is content with his life as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo. Outside of his structured routine, he cherishes music on cassette tapes, books, and taking photos of trees. Through unexpected encounters, he reflects on finding beauty in the world.

A beautiful session between dancer Tanaka Min and director Wim Wenders that illustrates something before we started speaking with words.

This unique cinematic experience dives deep into an artist’s work and reveals his life path, inspiration, and creative process. It explores his fascination with myth and history. Past and present are interwoven to diffuse the line between film and painting, allowing the audience to be completely immersed in the remarkable world of one of the greatest contemporary artists, Anselm Kiefer. Wim Wenders shot this unique portrait over the course of two years in stunning 3D.

Wim Wenders ponders about the future of our society and film making amidst the Covid-19 pandemic.

TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT EDWARD HOPPER is an immersive experience in 3D, that takes its viewers on a journey into the world of Hopper, sharpening their senses for some aspects of his unique work.

Pope Francis responds to questions from around the world, discussing topics including ecology, immigration, consumerism and social justice.

While James More is held captive by terrorists in Somalia, thousands of miles away on the Greenland Sea, his lover Danny Flinders prepares to dive herself in a submersible into the deep bottom of the ocean, tormented by the memories of their brief encounter in France and her inability to know his whereabouts.

A man and a woman share their musings on love and freedom one summer night. The couple’s conversation meanders through memories, unspoken desires and passion through poetic dialogue.

One day, driving aimlessly around the outskirts of town after a trivial domestic quarrel, a writer named Tomas accidentally hits and kills a child. Will he be able to move on?

During the last forty years, the photographer Sebastião Salgado has been travelling through the continents, in the footsteps of an ever-changing humanity. He has witnessed the major events of our recent history: international conflicts, starvations and exodus… He is now embarking on the discovery of pristine territories, of the wild fauna and flora, of grandiose landscapes: a huge photographic project which is a tribute to the planet's beauty. Salgado's life and work are revealed to us by his son, Juliano, who went with him during his last journeys, and by Wim Wenders, a photographer himself.

Thirteen filmmakers share personal reflections on Henri Langlois—the visionary founder of the Cinémathèque Française—recounting his influence on their lives, his role in preserving film history, and his enduring impact on world cinema.

"If buildings could talk, what would they say about us?" CATHEDRALS OF CULTURE offers six startling responses. This 3D film project about the soul of buildings allows six iconic and very different buildings to speak for themselves, examining human life from the unblinking perspective of a manmade structure. Six acclaimed filmmakers bring their own visual style and artistic approach to the project. Buildings, they show us, are material manifestations of human thought and action: the Berlin Philharmonic, an icon of modernity; the National Library of Russia, a kingdom of thoughts; Halden Prison, the world's most humane prison; the Salk Institute, an institute for breakthrough science; the Oslo Opera House, a futuristic symbiosis of art and life; and the Centre Pompidou, a modern culture machine. CATHEDRALS OF CULTURE explores how each of these landmarks reflects our culture and guards our collective memory.

A 3-D Wim Wenders film tours the futuristic, 50-year-old Berlin Philharmonic. Part of the anthology film Cathedrals of Culture (2014).

An anthology film following different stories around the theme of invisibility in the modern world.

Wim Wenders details a doctor's program to educate and assist children with eye disorders into gaining abilities to use their vision in the future. Part of the anthology film Invisible World (2012).

Pina is a feature-length dance film in 3D with the ensemble of the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, featuring the unique and inspiring art of the great German choreographer, who died in the summer of 2009.

Inspired by the experiences of some small southern Italian municipalities which chose to integrate a set of Kurdish refugees into the dwindling population of their own people giving new life to the dying villages.

After the wild lifestyle of a famous young German photographer almost gets him killed, he goes to Palermo, Sicily to take a break. Can the beautiful city and a beautiful local woman calm him down?

Wim Wenders' short film as part of the '8' anthology film.

8 shorts centered around 8 themes directed by 8 famous film directors involved and sharing their opinion on progress, on the set-backs and the challenges our planet faces today.

Commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, "To Each His Own Cinema" brought together 33 of the world's pre-eminent filmmakers to produce short pieces exploring the multifarious facets of cinema and their perspective on the state of their chosen artform in the early 21st century.

A half-hour documentary shot in the town of Kabalo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2006, on the subject of Violence Against Women, for Doctors Without Borders. Wim Wenders' short film as part of the anthology film Invisibles (2007)

A series of short films examining the world's overlooked problems and the people who suffer from them.

Howard Spence has seen better days. Once a big Western movie star, he now drowns his disgust for his selfish and failed life with alcohol, drugs and young women. If he were to die now, nobody would shed a tear over him, that's the sad truth. Until one day Howard learns that he might have a child somewhere out there...

After living abroad, Lana returns to the United States, and finds that her uncle is a reclusive vagabond with psychic wounds from the Vietnam War.

Wim Wenders looks at the dramatic tension in the blues between the sacred and the profane by exploring the music and lives of three of his favorite blues artists: Skip James, Blind Willie Johnson and J. B. Lenoir. Part history, part personal pilgrimage, the film tells the story of these lives in music through an extended fictional film sequence (recreations of '20s and '30s events - shot in silent-film, hand-crank style), rare archival footage, present-day documentary scenes and covers of their songs by contemporary musicians such as Shemekia Copeland, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Garland Jeffreys, Chris Thomas King, Cassandra Wilson, Nick Cave, Los Lobos, Eagle Eye Cherry, Vernon Reid, James "Blood" Ulmer, Lou Reed, Bonnie Raitt, Marc Ribot, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Lucinda Williams and T-Bone Burnett.

Ten Minutes Older is a 2002 film project consisting of two compilation feature films entitled The Trumpet and The Cello. The project was conceived by the producer Nicolas McClintock as a reflection on the theme of time at the turn of the Millennium. Fifteen celebrated film-makers were invited to create their own vision of what time means in ten minutes of film.

Documentary about the rock group BAP from Cologne in Germany.

A federal agent searches for a potential killer among the bizarre residents of a dilapidated Los Angeles hotel.

In this fascinating Oscar-nominated documentary, American guitarist Ry Cooder brings together a group of legendary Cuban folk musicians (some in their 90s) to record a Grammy-winning CD in their native city of Havana. The result is a spectacular compilation of concert footage from the group's gigs in Amsterdam and New York City's famed Carnegie Hall, with director Wim Wenders capturing not only the music -- but also the musicians' life stories.

When Willie Nelson and album producer Daniel Lanois set out to create a cinematic-sounding album, "Teatro", they took over a disused movie theatre in Oxnard, California, and pictured its dusty glory on the cover art. Recorded as-live in situ amid the red velvet seats, Teatro sees Nelson working extensively with his frequent collaborator Emmylou Harris, who joins him for duets and on backing vocals. Recorded 1998. Wim Wenders filmed the event.

In Hollywood, the lives of a successful film producer, his wife, a police detective and a surveillance agent intersect after a botched abduction.

40 international directors were asked to make a short film using the original Cinematographe invented by the Lumière Brothers, working under conditions similar to those of 1895. There were three rules: (1) The film could be no longer than 52 seconds, (2) no synchronized sound was permitted, and (3) no more than three takes.

A rare gem of cinematic storytelling that weaves docudrama, fictional reenactment, and experimental photography into a powerful, reflective work on the early days of German cinema. The film tells the story of the Skladanowsky Brothers, the German-born duo responsible for inventing the "bioskop", an early version of the film projector.

Wim Wenders' homage to Lisbon and films. A sound engineer obtains a mysterious postcard from a friend who at the moment is filming a film in Lisbon. He sets out across Europe to find him and help him.

“The bear leaves Berlin. It is fed up with its city. On the way two Russian ladies, Anna and her daughter Arisha, hire him as a driver. They are joined by a Santa Claus who despises Christmas and a Vietnamese family who are on their way to the sea. They sing a song together, The Weeping Song by Nick Cave. And they are out to find a stone ring that is buried on the beach. The film was commissioned by a Japanese car museum. There you could see the film with six smells (!), sitting on car seats that would tilt in corners and shake on cobble stone pavement. This small film saved a big one’s life: FARAWAY, SO CLOSE! could not have been finished for financial reasons if this opportunity to make a short film with the same team had not arisen. That is how we financed the last week of shooting FARAWAY, SO CLOSE!.”

A group of angels look longingly upon the life of humans. Berlin now is a very different place: unified in name but overrun with crime, corruption, and—in what turns out to be a key theme here—Americans.

In 1999, a woman's life is forever changed after she survives a car crash with two bank robbers, who enlist her help to take the money to a drop in Paris. On the way, she runs into another fugitive from the law — an American doctor on the run from the CIA. They want to confiscate his father's invention – a device which allows anyone to record their dreams and visions.

This music special is dedicated to dispelling the prejudices associated with the HIV infection and raising money for AIDS research and relief. Some of today's most celebrated recording artists performing their interpretations of the classic songs of Cole Porter.

Wim Wenders talks with Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto about the creative process and ponders the relationship between cities, identity and the cinema in the digital age.

Two angels, Damiel and Cassiel, glide through the streets of Berlin, observing the bustling population, providing invisible rays of hope to the distressed but never interacting with them. When Damiel falls in love with lonely trapeze artist Marion, the angel longs to experience life in the physical world, and finds — with some words of wisdom from actor Peter Falk — that it might be possible for him to take human form.

German director Wim Wenders tries to explore the Tokyo that was depicted in the films of Yasujiro Ozu and finds a very different city.

During the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, Wim Wenders asked a number of global film directors to, one at a time, go into a hotel room, turn on the camera, and answer a simple question: "What is the future of cinema?"

A man wanders out of the desert not knowing who he is. His brother finds him, and helps to pull his memory back of the life he led before he walked out on his family and disappeared four years earlier.

Wim Wenders's atmospheric testimony about the problems he encountered while working on HAMMET(1982) with Francis Ford Coppola, and the differences between the film-making process in Europe and the States.

Chinatown, San Francisco, 1928. Former private detective Dashiell Hammett, a compulsive drinker with tuberculosis who writes pulp fiction for a living, receives an unexpected visit from an old friend asking for help.

On location in Portugal, a film crew runs out of film while making their own version of Roger Corman's The Day the World Ended (1956). The producer is nowhere to be found and director Munro attempts to find him in hopes of being able to finish the film.

Director 'Nicholas Ray' is eager to complete a final film before his imminent death from cancer. Wim Wenders is working on his own film Hammett (1983) in Hollywood, but flies to New York to help Ray realize his final wish. Ray's original intent is to make a fiction film about a dying painter who sails to China to find a cure for his disease. He and Wenders discuss this idea, but it is obviously unrealistic given Ray's state of health.

Tom Ripley, an American who deals in forged art, is slighted at an auction in Hamburg by picture framer Jonathan Zimmerman. When Ripley is asked by gangster Raoul Minot to kill a rival, he suggests Zimmerman, and the two, exploiting Zimmerman's terminal illness, coerce him into being a hitman.

Itinerant projection-equipment repairman Bruno Winter and depressed hitchhiker Robert Lander - a doctor who has just been through a break-up with his wife and a half-hearted suicide attempt - travel along the Western side of the East-German border in a repair truck, visiting worn-out movie theaters, learning to communicate across their differences.

Goalkeeper Josef Bloch is sent off after committing a foul during an away game. This causes him to lose his bearings, and he wanders aimlessly through the city streets and spends the night with the box-office attendant of a movie theatre.

Six days in the life of Wilhelm: a detached man without qualities. He wants to write, so his mother gives him a ticket to Bonn, telling him to live. On the train he meets an older man, an athlete in the 1936 Olympics, and his mute teen companion, Mignon. She's an acrobat in market squares for spare change.

A commissioned work for a television series on WDR, A House for Us. FROM THE FAMILY OF REPTILES and THE ISLAND are a complete program in two episodes. After all with Michael Ballhaus as the cinematographer. Ute (Katja Wulff), an 8 year old girl, constantly runs away from home and the youth center to escape into her own world. She spends many hours at the zoo and especially in front of the crocodile compound. Monika Brehm (Lisa Kreuzer), the kindergarten teacher, tries to find an entrance into Ute’s world. She realizes that her escapes are a form of withdrawal from her parents and the grown up world.

A commissioned work for a television series on WDR, A House for Us. FROM THE FAMILY OF REPTILES and THE ISLAND are a complete program in two episodes. Monika manages to convince Mr. and Mrs. Hagedorn that their daughter is not mischievous or insidious but that her parents should consult a Psychotherapist with her. But as usual all the therapists are booked out and have a long waiting list for patients. So Ute is left alone once more with her helpless parents and she is more and more drawn to the zoo and her beloved crocodiles. Thanks to Monika’s sense of responsibility and her commitment, Ute manages to break free from her isolation.

German journalist Philip Winter has a case of writer’s block when trying to write an article about the United States. He decides to return to Germany, and while trying to book a flight, encounters a German woman and her nine year old daughter Alice doing the same. The three become friends (almost out of necessity) and while the mother asks Winter to mind Alice temporarily, it quickly becomes apparent that Alice will be his responsibility for longer than he expected.

In 17th-century Salem, Hester Prynne must wear a scarlet A because she is an adulteress, with a child out of wedlock. For seven years, she has refused to name the father. A vigorous older stranger arrives, recognized by Hester but unknown to others as her missing husband. He poses as Chillingworth, a doctor, watching Hester and searching out the identity of her lover. His eye soon rests on Dimmesdale, a young overwrought pastor. Enmity grows between the two men; Chillingworth applies psychological pressure, and the pastor begins to crack. A ship stops in Salem, and Hester sees it as a providential refuge for her daughter, herself, and her lover. But will Dimmesdale flee with her?

After a long prison term, a free man wanders into a new reality.

Another short was 3 American LPs, which was the first film I did with Peter Handke. It was a film about American music, about three pieces of three LPs. There was a song by Van Morrison, another by Harvey Mandel, and one of Credence Clearwater Revival. It was mainly the music and some shots out of a car, landscapes out of the car window. And it had a little bit of commentary – dialogue between Peter and me about American music and about how American rock music was about emotion and images instead of sounds. That is to say, about a kind of phenomenon, that it was in a way a kind of film music, but without a moving picture. It was a 12-minute film and it was never shown. – Wim Wenders

New times have come for the way demonstrations are handled by the police. No more crude repression... "Policemen come from the people, just as demonstrators". Therefore, if you're a cop, now it's a matter of "convincing" your "comrade" who's demonstrating to forget about it.

An 3-hour project conceived by ten directors presenting the famous German legend of Kaspar Hauser, the story of a man who spent his childhood and adolescence raised on a cave by a strange man who kept him there for 18 years. One day, the man decides to take the young man out of the cave and takes him to a city where the under-developed subject will finally learn what it means to be a human being.

A series of ten shots, three minutes in length, of various locales in Munich.

"The film starts with a shot of a cassette recorder, and it has a juke box in it. There’s always music in it. When I was asked by some critics at a festival press conference what the film was all about, I said 'it’s about the song All Along The Watchtower, and the film is about what happens and what changes depending on whether the song is sung by Bob Dylan or by Jimi Hendrix.'" Well, both versions of the song appear in the film, and everybody thought I was pretty arrogant to explain the story this way. But the film really is about the difference between the Dylan version of All Along the Watchtower, and the Jimi Hendrix Version. One is at the beginning and one is at the end." – Wim Wenders

Sequence of five shots, each one with a particular color treatment, in which a man carrying a machine gun runs. He moves fast in the beginning but, as the end comes closer, he starts to walk in zigzag. Is he hurt?

Wim Wenders' first work. According to Wenders official website, "the film got lost. There was no print of it, just the original material, which was shot on reversal film stock."