WIM WENDERS
Words: Simran Hans
Photos: Katie McCurdy
Styling: Ashley Abtahie
Whether in the US, Europe or Japan, or between feature films and documentaries, the director Wim Wenders has always been on the move. As he turns 80, he shows no signs of slowing down.
- Words Simran Hans
- Photos Katie McCurdy
- Styling Ashley Abtahie
- Set Designer Elaine Winter
- Groomer Dana Boyer at the Wall Group using iS Clinical
- Production Veronica Leone
Wenders wears a vintage jacket by VERSACE from LARA KOLEJI, and his own sweater, eyewear and trousers by YOHJI YAMAMOTO.
( 1 ) There is a long literary tradition of writing on the move, which includes Vladimir Nabokov, who wrote Lolita in the back seat of an Oldsmobile while his wife drove across the US, and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author of The Little Prince, who would read and write on solo flights—sometimes circling the airport for an hour so he could finish a novel.
( 2 ) Wenders was part of a generation of Germans who grew up in a country that was trying to rebuild itself after World War II while coming to terms with the atrocities of Nazism. Artist Anselm Kiefer, the subject of a 2023 documentary by Wenders, was also born in 1945 and explicitly confronts this history in his work.
Wim Wenders loves to write on long-haul flights. “I never watch movies on planes,” says the 79-year-old director of Wings of Desire, Perfect Days and Paris, Texas. On the few occasions that he has made use of the in-flight entertainment, he found himself “liking films that later on embarrassed me—I think they put something into the air.”
( 1 ) There is a long literary tradition of writing on the move, which includes Vladimir Nabokov, who wrote Lolita in the back seat of an Oldsmobile while his wife drove across the US, and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author of The Little Prince, who would read and write on solo flights—sometimes circling the airport for an hour so he could finish a novel.
( 2 ) Wenders was part of a generation of Germans who grew up in a country that was trying to rebuild itself after World War II while coming to terms with the atrocities of Nazism. Artist Anselm Kiefer, the subject of a 2023 documentary by Wenders, was also born in 1945 and explicitly confronts this history in his work.
