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Wim Wenders

German filmmaker (born 1945)

13.22body-of-work score · ranked #49 of 2631 directors · 15 films in our library

A director's score is the sum of their films' composite canon scores — methodology.

Born
August 14, 1945 · Düsseldorf
Nationality
Germany
Work
film director, actor, photographer, screenwriter
Movement
New German Cinema
Reference
Wikipedia · Wikidata
Portrait of Wim Wenders
Harald Krichel · CC BY-SA 4.0

The road and the frame

Wenders is the great cinematic tourist — a filmmaker for whom the journey is never a metaphor for something else but the actual subject, the thing itself. Where his New German Cinema contemporaries turned inward on the national wound, he pointed the camera at the horizon: American diners, Berlin overpasses, the space between two people in a moving car. The knock is that this makes him a stylist of surfaces, a photographer who happens to run film through the gate. I'd argue the opposite. Nobody has looked harder at landscape as a state of mind, and the best of the work — a handful of films across the 1970s and 1980s — turns wandering into a moral posture rather than an aesthetic tic.

Düsseldorf to the desert

Born in Düsseldorf on August 14, 1945, the son of a surgeon, he tried medicine at Freiburg and philosophy at Düsseldorf before decamping to Paris in 1966 to paint. He failed the entrance exam at the IDHEC film school and instead absorbed cinema the hard way, reportedly watching up to five films a day in the city's theatres. Back in Germany he entered the film school in Munich (1967–1970) and worked as a critic — for Der Spiegel among others — before Summer in the City (1970) launched him. The road-movie trilogy followed: Alice in the Cities (1974), Wrong Move (1975), Kings of the Road (1976), the last taking the FIPRESCI prize at Cannes. Then the two peaks. Paris, Texas (1984), written by Sam Shepard, won the Palme d'Or and a BAFTA for direction; Wings of Desire (1987), co-written with the poet Peter Handke, won him Best Director at Cannes. Robby Müller shot much of the early canon, and that partnership is half the reason these films look the way they do. Later Wenders became, improbably, one of cinema's premier documentarians — Buena Vista Social Club (1999), Pina (2011), and Perfect Days (2023) all reaching the Academy Awards.

What the numbers say

Our library ranks Wenders #49 among all directors, composite 13.22 across 15 films — solidly canonical, well short of the New German Cinema summit. The internal shape is starkly top-heavy. Paris, Texas alone carries him at #65 (3.89, cited by 11 of our sources); Wings of Desire trails at #177 (2.83) despite drawing the most citations of any Wenders film, 13. After those two the curve collapses: The State of Things (1982), his Golden Lion winner at Venice, sits at #800, and everything else falls below #900 — Perfect Days at #973, Kings of the Road at #1971, Alice in the Cities down at #3184. The aggregate is telling you something true and slightly cruel: Wenders is a two-film director in the eyes of the canon, and the reputation rests almost entirely on the desert and the angels. Even the documentaries our sources love barely register in a list built on critical citation.

Where to start

Paris, Texas first — the Shepard script, the Müller color, Harry Dean Stanton walking out of the heat is the purest distillation of what Wenders does. Then Wings of Desire for the other register, black-and-white Berlin and the ache of the incarnate. Kings of the Road if you want the early, patient, three-hour version of the same restlessness.

Films in our library, ranked

Ranked by composite canon score across 20+ authoritative lists, awards and polls — our ordering, with every placement citing its evidence on the film's page.

  1. 1
    Paris, TexasMust-See #65

    1984 · France / Germany · drama

    Palme d'Or winner 1984 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #185 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1985 #6

    3.8911 citations
  2. 2
    Wings of DesireDer Himmel über BerlinMust-See #177

    1987 · France / Germany · fantasy, drama

    Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1987 #2 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1988 #3 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #185

    2.8313 citations
  3. 3
    The State of ThingsDer Stand der Dinge

    1982 · Portugal / Germany / United States · drama

    Venice Golden Lion winner 1982 · Kehr's annual top 10 1983 #6 · Rosenbaum's Essential Cinema

    1.293 citations
  4. 4
    Perfect Days

    2023 · Japan / Germany · drama

    Kinema Junpo Best Ten (Japanese) 2023 #2 · Letterboxd Top 250 #143 · Criterion Collection spine #1226

    1.114 citations
  5. 5
    The American FriendDer amerikanische Freund

    1977 · Germany / France · film-noir, drama, crime

    Kehr's annual top 10 1978 #3 · Scorsese's 39 essential foreign films · NYT Best 1,000 Movies

    0.814 citations
  6. 6
    Faraway, So Close!In weiter Ferne, so nah!

    1993 · Germany · fantasy, drama

    Cannes Grand Prix winner 1993

    0.751 citation
  7. 7
    Kings of the RoadIm Lauf der Zeit

    1976 · Germany · drama

    Scorsese's 39 essential foreign films · Criterion Collection spine #816 · Ebert's annual top 10 1978 #9

    0.654 citations
  8. 8
    Buena Vista Social Club

    1999 · Germany / France / United Kingdom · documentary, musical

    National Film Registry (inducted 2020) · Criterion Collection spine #866

    0.392 citations
  9. 9
    Alice in the CitiesAlice in den Städten

    1974 · Germany · drama

    Criterion Collection spine #814 · Edgar Wright's 1,000 favorite movies · Rosenbaum's Essential Cinema

    0.383 citations
  10. 10
    Pina

    2011 · Germany / France · musical, documentary

    Film Comment year-end poll 2011 #50 · Criterion Collection spine #644

    0.342 citations
  11. 11
    The End of Violence

    1997 · United States / France / Germany · drama

    Siskel's annual top 10 1997 #5

    0.191 citation
  12. 12
    Wrong MoveFalsche Bewegung

    1975 · Germany · drama

    Criterion Collection spine #815

    0.161 citation
  13. 13
    Until the End of the WorldBis ans Ende der Welt

    1991 · France / Germany / Australia · drama, sci-fi

    Criterion Collection spine #1007

    0.161 citation
  14. 14
    Room 666Chambre 666

    1982 · France / Germany · documentary

    Hoberman's annual top 10 1985 #9

    0.151 citation
  15. 15
    Hammett

    1982 · United States · crime, biography, film-noir

    Rosenbaum's Essential Cinema

    0.111 citation

Complete filmography

All 54 directorial credits recorded on Wikidata, in chronological order; films in our library link to their canon-score page.