Wenders, Wim << VEHN durz, vihm >> (1945-…), a German motion-picture director, became known as one of the leading talents in the German cinema after 1970. He won critical acclaim with such films as Paris, Texas (1984), which won the Palme d’Or award at the Cannes Festival, and Wings of Desire (1987), for which he was named best director at Cannes. These and other films sympathetically depict aspects of everyday life and deal with the themes of isolation and alienation, as well as homelessness versus home. Many of his characters are restless individuals wandering through bleak but beautiful urban and rural landscapes.
Wenders’s work also displays a keen interest in the influence of the culture of the United States upon Europe, especially modern Germany. His interest in contemporary German life is the central element in such films as Wings of Desire and Faraway, So Close! (1993), which look at life in Berlin, both before and after German reunification.
Wilhelm Wenders was born in Düsseldorf, Germany, on Aug. 14, 1945, and began training in medicine before switching to motion-picture direction. From 1967 to 1970, he attended the Film and Television College in Munich, where he made his first short films. Between 1968 and 1972, Wenders also worked as a film critic and journalist. He made his first feature film, Summer in the City, in 1970. His other films include The Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Penalty (1972), Alice in the Cities (1974), The American Friend (1977), The State of Things (1982), Until the End of the World (1991), Lisbon Story (1995), The End of Violence (1997), City of Angels (1998), The Million Dollar Hotel (1999), and Don’t Come Knocking (2006). His documentary The Buena Vista Social Club (1998) won several awards. Wenders also directed the documentary Pina (2011), a tribute to the German choreographer Pina Bausch.
In 1995, Wenders’s film company, Road Movies, produced Beyond the Clouds, a film made by the veteran Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, for which Wenders directed the prologue and epilogue. Wenders’s autobiography, The Art of Seeing, was published in 1998.
