Kings of the Road (1976)

“Kings of the Road” is about a friendship between two men: Bruno, aka ‘King of the Road,’ who repairs film projectors and travels along the inner-German border in his truck, and the psychologist Robert, aka ‘Kamikaze,’ who is fleeing from his own past. When Robert drives his old VW straight into the Elbe River, he is fished out by Bruno. This is the beginning of their shared journey through a German no man’s land, a journey that leads them from the Lüneburg Heath to the Bavarian Forest.

Wenders began the film without a script. Instead, there was a route that he had scouted out beforehand: all of the little towns along the inner border of West Germany with East Germany that still contained a movie theater in this era of cinematic mass extinction. The old moving van with the film projectors in the back becomes a metaphor of the history of cinema; it is no coincidence that the film is dedicated to Fritz Lang.

The film is the third part of Wenders’ “road movies” trilogy, along with “Alice in the Cities” and “Wrong Move.”

This ‘men’s story also treats the themes of the absence of women, of loneliness, and of post-war (West) Germany. At one point, Bruno says to Robert: “The Yankees have colonized our subconscious.”

FIPRESCI Prize at the 1976 Cannes International Film Festival

Gold Hugo (Best Film) at the 1976 Chicago International Film Festival