Wim Wenders

Roles: Director

Wim Wenders was born in Düsseldorf in 1945. After two years of studying medicine and philosophy and a year-long stay in Paris as a painter, he attended the University of Television and Film in Munich from 1967 to 1970.

One of the most important figures to emerge from the “New German Cinema” period in the 1970s, he was a founding member of the German film distributor Filmverlag der Autoren in 1971 and he established his own production company, Road Movies, in Berlin in 1975. Alongside directing atmospheric auteur films, Wenders works with the medium of photography, and his poignant images of desolate landscapes engage themes including memory, time and movement. His photography series, “Pictures from the surface of the Earth” and “Places, strange and quiet”, have been exhibited in museums and art institutions around the world.

Wim Wenders has published numerous books with essays and photographs. Wim Wenders became a member of the Academy of Arts Berlin in 1984. He was awarded honorary doctorates at the Sorbonne University in Paris (1989), the Theological Faculty of the University of Fribourg (1995), the University of Louvain (2005) and the Architectural Faculty of the University of Catania (2010). He is a founding member and president of the European Film Academy and member of the order Pour le Mérite. Currently he is teaching film as a professor at the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg. Win Wenders co-authored the book Inventing Peace with Mary Zournazi, published by I.B. Tauris, London.

Wenders is currently in post-production with his upcoming 3D feature film Every Thing Will Be Fine, starring James Franco, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Rachel McAdams.

He lives in Berlin, together with his wife, photographer Donata Wenders.