Do we like them?

Do we like Wim Wenders?

Our score: 7 out of 10. A gentle, pro-Europe, pro-planet filmmaker with two real stains: a contested stance on politics at the Berlinale, and years of resisting a fix to a 1975 scene.

Wenders was born in 1945 and grew up in a postwar Germany heavy with defeat and guilt. By his own account he spent years longing to get out, and he lived in America from 1977 to 1984. That unhappy stretch gave us Paris, Texas, which won the Palme d'Or, and he came home to make Wings of Desire.

The recent run has been Perfect Days, a gentle film about a Tokyo toilet cleaner, plus documentaries like Pina and Anselm. It's quiet, humane work, and nothing in what turned up links him to the culture-war crowd. That's worth saying given how many ageing directors have gone sour.

The big stoush was the Berlinale in February, where he was jury president. Asked why the festival backs human rights in Iran and Ukraine but not in Gaza, he said filmmakers should stay out of politics and do “the work of people, not the work of politicians.” Defenders see a jury head refusing to speak for a whole festival. Critics, including author Arundhati Roy, who pulled out, heard a dodge on Gaza. Where you land depends on which you read it as.

In September at Venice he said he'd been misunderstood, arguing that filmmakers work from empathy and politicians don't. That's a clarification, not a retreat, and he didn't change his stance. He is not a silent man on politics generally: in 2024 he said nationalism was coming back and called Europe a beautiful idea worth defending. He also said the climate was heading in the wrong direction.

The messier story is Wrong Move, his 1975 film with a scene of Nastassja Kinski topless at 13. Kinski said in an interview that she'd spent years trying to get him to change it. In June he pulled the film and apologised “unreservedly, no ifs and buts.” Her lawyer welcomed it but called it long overdue and noted it came under public pressure. An apology counts for more when acts follow, and here the film really did come down. The long delay stays on the record.

On the good stuff, the record we could read is thin outside the films themselves. His empathy-first view of cinema and his defence of Europe against nationalism are on the right side of the ledger. That's honestly the whole list from the pages we opened. No court cases, no harmful associations, no harmful words turned up.