Wim Wenders (born August 14, 1945, Düsseldorf, Germany) is a German film director who, along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Herzog, was one of the principal members of the New German Cinema of the 1970s.
During the late 1960s Wenders studied at the University of Television and Film Munich while working as a film critic. After directing eight short movies and a feature-length film for the academy, he made his first commercial feature, the thriller Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (1972; The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick), based on a novel by Peter Handke. In 1976 he wrote, directed, and produced Im Lauf der Zeit (“In the Course of Time”; Eng. title Kings of the Road), a “buddy” picture pairing a depressed man with a movie-projector repairman who can barely communicate as they travel across Germany together. Der amerikanische Freund (1977; The American Friend), based on Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley’s Game, explores the concept of dislocation, or separation. For this film, Wenders cast his longtime idol, film director Nicholas Ray, and the two later collaborated on the documentary Lightning over Water (1980), about the last days of Ray’s life.
In 1978 Wenders went to Hollywood to direct Hammett, a tribute to American detective fiction writer Dashiell Hammett. Disputes between Wenders and executive producer Francis Ford Coppola resulted in the release of only a truncated version some years later. The difficulties Wenders encountered with Hammett served as inspiration for Der Stand der Dinge (1982; The State of Things), which depicts the mishaps of a film production in Portugal. Wenders achieved international fame in 1984 with the release of Paris, Texas, which was cowritten by Sam Shepard. The lyrical drama about a man in the American Southwest who is physically and spiritually lost won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival. Three years later Wenders received the best-director award at Cannes for the hauntingly beautiful Der Himmel über Berlin (“Heaven over Berlin”; Eng. title Wings of Desire), in which angels roam modern-day Berlin. The film’s sequel, In weiter Ferne, so nah! (1993; Faraway, So Close!), however, was far less successful artistically.
Wenders’s films were notable for their lush visual imagery, largely because of the talents of his most frequent collaborator, cinematographer Robby Müller. Wenders’s later work included Lisbon Story (1995), a sequel to The State of Things; the thriller The End of Violence (1997); the ensemble mystery The Million Dollar Hotel (2000); and the drama Palermo Shooting (2008). He also directed the documentaries Buena Vista Social Club (1999), about a group of veteran Cuban musicians; Pina (2011), a 3-D tribute to German choreographer Pina Bausch; The Salt of the Earth (2014), a chronicle of the career of photojournalist Sebastião Salgado; and Pope Francis: A Man of His Word (2018), a favourable portrait of the pontiff’s efforts toward social engagement.
In 2022 Wenders was awarded the prestigious Praemium Imperiale for theatre/film by the Japan Art Association.