Wim Wenders: The Great Retrospective

Wim Wenders films the world as if seeing it for the first time. From “Paris, Texas” to “Wings of Desire,” the universe of this great German filmmaker does not move at the pace of everyday life but leaves time for wandering. His often-silent characters observe the small and large moments of life that unfold around them. His films allow audiences to breathe, and this tribute to his life and work reminds us that the essence of living can be found in silences, glances, and journeys. Following the paths of wanderers searching for themselves, from Hamburg to Hollywood and from harsh realities to the enchanting landscapes of dreams, Wenders lands at the Onassis Stegi in his own unique way.

A three-day cinematic tribute takes over the entire Onassis Stegi building, featuring thirteen film screenings, a masterclass, and a conversation with the acclaimed director, as well as a 3D short film installation presented in Greece for the first time. His ‘Road Trilogy’ of films meets “Room 666” and “The American Friend,” the play of light (“some body comes into the light”), and the director’s own reflections (“Reverse Angle”). Wenders’ ‘hidden’ short films encounter the living paintings of the great American artist Edward Hopper, while the internationally acclaimed filmmaker’s award-winning features hold a special surprise: a rare screening of the five-hour director’s cut of “Until the End of the World,” shown for the first time in Greece.

Wenders rose to international prominence in 1984 with the release of “Paris, Texas,” co-written with Sam Shepard. This melancholic story about a man in the American Southwest who feels physically and spiritually shattered 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” (“Wings of Desire”), in which angels wander through contemporary Berlin.

FRIDAY 14.11

Main Stage

20:00–21:00 | Wim Wenders in conversation with Afroditi Panagiotakou

21:30 | Paris, Texas (1984), Remastered 4K, Duration: 2 hours 27 min

SATURDAY 15.11

Upper Stage

17:00–18:00 | Masterclass with Wim Wenders

18:30 | Room 666 (1982), Duration: 50 min

19:30 | Wings of Desire (1987), Duration: 2 hours 8 min

21:45 | The American Friend (1977), Duration: 2 hours 7 min

- 1 / Free Admission, online reservation is required

18:30 | Screening of Wim Wenders’ short films, Duration: 1 hour

• Reverse Angle (1982)
• Same Player Shoots Again (1967)
• Invisible Crimes (2007)
• some body comes into the light (2023)

20:00 | Until the End of the World (1994, Director’s Cut), Duration: 5 hours

3th Floor Foyer / Free Admission, online reservation is required

3D Short Film / Installation, Duration: 14 min

Slots: 18:30, 19:00, 19:30, 20:00, 20:30, 21:00, 21:30, 22:00, 22:30, 23:00

Two or three things I know about Edward Hopper

SUNDAY 16.11

Upper Stage

17:00 | Alice in the Cities (1974), Duration: 1 hour 50 min

19:00 | Wrong Move (1975), Duration: 1 hour 43 min

21:00 | Kings of the Road (1976), Duration: 2 hours 55 min

- 1 / Free Admission, online reservation is required

18:30 | Short films by Wim Wenders, Duration: 1 hour

• Reverse Angle (1982)
• Same Player Shoots Again (1967)
• Invisible Crimes (2007)
• some body comes into the light (2023)

20:00 | Until the End of the World (1994, Director’s Cut), Duration: 5 hours

3th Floor Foyer / Free Admission, online reservation is required

3D Short Film / Installation, Duration: 14 min

Slots: 18:30, 19:00, 19:30, 20:00, 20:30, 21:00, 21:30, 22:00, 22:30, 23:00

Two or three things I know about Edward Hopper

• After graduating from school, Wim Wenders began to study medicine and philosophy before moving to Paris in 1966 “to fulfill his dream and become a painter.”

• He started his apprenticeship in the studio of the graphic artist and engraver Johnny Friedlaender, spending his afternoons and then increasingly his nights at the Cinémathèque Française, where he watched hundreds of films, most of them introduced by Henri Langlois. This “crash course in the history of cinema” became an important stage in his education in which Wenders began to see film as an “extension of painting by other means.”

• Wenders began his career as a filmmaker in autumn 1967 when he enrolled at the newly founded University of Television and Film (HFF) in Munich. Parallel to his studies at the HFF, he also worked as a film critic from 1967 until the early 1970s. It was during this time that he made his first short films.

• Immediately after graduating with the feature film “Summer in the City” (1970), he and fifteen other directors and writers founded the Filmverlag der Autoren in 1971, a cooperative of young German auteur filmmakers who thus took production, rights management, and distribution of their films into their own hands.

• After “The Goalkeeper’s Anxiety of the Penalty” (1971), his first feature-length film, Wenders made the road movie trilogy “Alice in the Cities” (1974), “Wrong Move” (1974), and “Kings of the Road” (1975), in which the protagonists try to come to terms with their rootlessness in post-war Germany, among other things.

• In 1976, Wim Wenders founded the film production company Road Movies. Since then, the Berlin-based company has produced and co-produced numerous arthouse films by Wim Wenders and various other directors, with a particular focus on creative documentaries and productions in 3D. Today, Road Movies is managed by Marc Schmidheiny and Wim Wenders.

• In autumn 2012, Wim Wenders and his wife Donata established the Wim Wenders Stiftung in Düsseldorf, his hometown, a charitable foundation to create a framework to bring together and to preserve Wim Wenders’ cinematic, photographic, and literary lifework and to make it permanently accessible to the public. The Foundation is also dedicated to promoting young talent in the field of innovative filmmaking through the Wim Wenders Grant awarded in cooperation with the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW. It is also involved in film education, since it initiated the film education project “A European School of Seeing” for school students.

• In 2014, the Wim Wenders Foundation began to digitally restore Wim Wenders’ films and has so far restored 23 works at the highest standard. In 2018, the 4K-restored version of “Wings of Desire” was re-released, and since July 2024, the 4K-restored version of the cult film “Paris, Texas,” featuring an all-star cast including Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski, and Dean Stockwell, can be seen again theatrically worldwide. The Wim Wenders Foundation is managed by Claire Brunel and Hella Wenders.

• Alongside his cinematic work, photography has accompanied and shaped Wim Wenders since childhood. The starting point of his independent photographic work was the series “Written in the West,” created during the preparations for the film “Paris, Texas” in the American West. These works led, in 1986, to his first photo book as well as an exhibition at the renowned Centre Pompidou in Paris.

• His second major photo exhibition, “Pictures from the Surface of the Earth,” was presented in 2001 at the Hamburger Bahnhof—National Gallery of Contemporary Art in Berlin. In search of the essence of places, Wenders traveled for this project to countries including Australia, Cuba, Israel, Armenia, and Japan. In the following years, his photographs were exhibited worldwide in prominent museums and galleries, including the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2002), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney (2003), the Shanghai Museum of Art (2004), the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome (2006), and the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) (2010). In Germany, his works were shown, among others, at the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg (2012) and in a comprehensive retrospective in 2015 at the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf. Other important venues included the Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow (2012), the Fundació Sorigué in Lleida (2013), the Villa Pignatelli in Naples (2013), GL STRAND in Copenhagen (2014), and Villa Panza in Varese (2015). In 2017, The Photographers’ Gallery in London presented the first exhibition of Wenders’ Polaroids, which was shown again in 2018 at C/O Berlin.

• He has also created cross-media works such as the installation “(E)motion” at the Grand Palais in Paris, as well as the 3D installations “Two or Three Things I Know About Edward Hopper” (Fondation Beyeler, Basel) and “Présence” about the artist Claudine Drai (Venice Biennale).

• On the occasion of his 80th birthday, the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn is dedicating a large-scale immersive exhibition to Wim Wenders, realized in collaboration with the Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum (DFF), the Wim Wenders Foundation, Wenders Images, and with the support of Road Movies.

• Wenders Images is the photo studio of Wim and Donata Wenders, which produces and curates the photographic works of both artists in the form of exhibitions and publications. It is also the place where their art-related film projects and installations are created. Wenders Images is managed by Keiko Tominaga.

• His international breakthrough came with “The American Friend” (1977). Since then, Wenders has worked in Europe, the USA, Latin America, and Asia and was honored with numerous awards for his films at festivals around the world, including the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival for “The State of Things” (1982), the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Festival and the BAFTA Award for “Paris, Texas” (1984), the Award for Best Director in Cannes for “Wings of Desire” (1987), the Grand Jury Prize for “Faraway, So Close!” in Cannes (1993), and the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival for “The Million Dollar Hotel” (2000). His documentaries, “Buena Vista Social Club” (1999), “Pina” (2011), and “The Salt of the Earth” (2014), were each nominated for an Oscar.

• “Perfect Days” became one of Wenders’ internationally most successful films and was nominated for an Oscar in the International Feature Film category in 2024.

• Wim Wenders has been honored with numerous awards for the body of his cinematic work, including the Honorary Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement at the Berlinale in 2015.

• In 2022, Wenders was awarded the Japan Arts Association’s Praemium Imperiale, also known as the ‘Nobel Prize of the Arts.’

• In 2023–24, he received two of the most important awards in the field of film heritage: the Prix Lumière at the Lumière Film Festival in Lyon (2023) and the FIAF Award of the International Federation of Film Archives (2024).

• In September 2024, Wim Wenders received the Great Franco-German Media Prize in Paris. In December 2024, Wim Wenders received the European Film Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2025, he received the international Antonio Feltrinelli Film Award in Rome, as well as the Japanese government honor awarded by the Emperor of Japan: the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette.

• Wim Wenders was a professor at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg until 2017. He holds honorary doctorates from the Sorbonne in Paris, the Faculty of Theology at the University of Fribourg, the Catholic University of Louvain, the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Catania, and Oxford University, among others. He is a recipient of the Orden pour le Mérite, a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, and the European Film Academy, of which he served as President from 1996 to 2020.