Director Wim Wenders sat alone at the head of a massive mahogany table a floor above the cinema in Delhi that was showing his new documentary, Anselm, on German artist Anselm Kiefer who warns the world through his works about the perils of forgetting the past, especially fascism. Speaking quietly in halting English, the celebrated German filmmaker was relaxed on the last leg of his long India tour, explaining the impending elections in Germany on February 23, the current political divide between Europe and the US over the Russia-Ukraine war, disinformation and digital information and story selling as opposed to storytelling. (Also read: Wim Wenders charms Kolkata with screening of the restored version of Paris, Texas)
The director of iconic movies like Paris, Texas (1984), Wings of Desire (1987), Buena Vista Social Club (1999) and the more recent Perfect Days, reveals he is carrying his camera in his first-ever visit to India and even attempted a few shots in Kerala with more photography to follow in Rajasthan before he returns home early next month. Excerpts from an interview:
How has been your first visit to India now that the long tour, which started on February 5, has reached its last phase?
I have always wanted to come to India. But I was certain I wouldn’t come for a week. If I come, it has to be at least for a month. And it became the month of February 2025. I have two more weeks to go. It’s still too short. I have my big camera with me and am looking forward to going to Rajasthan because I love places. We will have ten days on our own now that I have shown my movies and mainly talked to people, and I like that. I didn’t take many pictures. a little bit of time in Kerala, yes.
Germany goes to polls on Sunday in an important election for the nation. Would you be able to vote?
I delivered my vote today. I went to the German embassy in New Delhi. The embassy actually has somebody flying now at this very moment with a whole suitcase full of votes by German citizens in India. It will arrive tomorrow in Berlin. It will all go immediately to the post office and will all arrive in time. So magically my whole worry that I couldn’t have my vote somehow count because I couldn’t get back early there has vanished.
The elections are happening at a time when European leaders are in a state of fear and suspicion about Vladimir Putin of Russia and also about across the Atlantic…
Actually we are more in fear about the other side of the Atlantic. We are now more in fear of (US President) Donald Trump’s weird idea of history than of Putin’s. At least with Putin we know who he is. With Trump we have no idea because he likes to produce chaos and fear. And that is scary.
Is this sudden divide between Europe and the US over the Russia-Ukraine war more about ideas and society and culture than geopolitics?
It is a cultural divide that came up in the last few years. Even in America itself it is a cultural divide between people who have no idea of history and no idea of decency. America is so divided, it is scary to be in America. I was in the US before I came to India. I was in New York. It is really scarier that you have a schizophrenic country. You have very two different Americas. And they don’t talk with each other. One doesn’t understand the other. The America that is in power now with Trump is devoid of any culture. Culture, first of all, is a knowledge of history. There is no culture without a knowledge of history. I don’t think this man (Trump) ever looked into a book. He once said even the sight of a book makes him yawn. I don’t think he knows what is inside in books. He only watches television. And he has his all information system out of television. He only looks at Fox TV. That is the big threat that we face, the lack of culture.
You talk about the perils of forgetting the past in your new documentary, Anselm, on the German artist Anselm Kiefer who warns about the danger of forgetting fascism. But it also about the rest of the world, not just Germany, isn’t it?
It is a phenomenon all over the world. Germany is one of the countries in the world with many borders. I don’t know if there is any other country with so many borders. And half of our borders are already with countries who now have far-right governments. Germany itself is too protected because Germans have learnt the lessons and they have tried to come to terms with their own history. Even now there is a threat of a far-right party, a fascist party. Even now this party is being fed by Russian propaganda.
A lot of disinformation is going on in Germany right now. One of the new disinformation is — it is big right now and you see it in lots of social media — one the far-right party promotes, the idea that Hitler was a communist. It is a new theory, I mean, devoid of any historical truth. The far-right now tells people that the worst guys, the bad guys are the Socialists and Communists. ‘By the way, Hitler was a Communist’, that is what they are telling people. The absence of knowledge of history, even in Germany at this moment, does make me look scared. Also in America there is this conspiracy theory now that Hitler’s was a Socialist party. Actually his party was called National Socialist. Nobody in America knows anymore, I think, that the Socialists were Hitler’s worst enemies. They just try to undermine any decency.
Billionaire businessman Elon Musk, who has a major role in the present Trump administration, live streamed his conversation with the leader of the far-right party in Germany ahead of the elections.
Even when the new Vice-President of America, JD Vance, came to Germany (for the Munich security conference last week). he didn’t meet with our Chancellor. He only met with the far-right. He met her, the far-right party leader (Alternative for Germany co-chair Alice Weidel). He told Germans publicly about the lack of democratic decency of German parties like the centre-right, the liberals and the four-five parties we have in Germany, who have all excluded themselves from having to work together with the neo-fascists. Mr Vance came to Germany to lecture us that this was anti-democratic and that this was the future of Germany, this far-right party and the unwillingness of our political parties to collaborate with them was a sign that we needed to learn what democracy was, again. So it is all a mockery of reality. And this is from (Nazi propaganda minister) Goebbels’ textbook: You tell so many lies that in the end people don’t know the difference.
In your new film, Perfect Days, the lead character Hirayama is a public toilet cleaner who reads a lot of books. Does he represent the scepticism of people today about the future of the world, about bringing children into it?
There is a certain scepticism that people are too preoccupied with. More people’s minds are too much taken by all these digital tools that surround us and they are running our lives instead of being of some help to us. They are little dictators. Everybody carries its own dictator in their pocket, except Hirayama, who is a very free person, a beautifully freed man. And maybe that is why a lot of young people like him. Because they have a deep long longing sometimes to live a much more simple life and not be so dependent on this thing (mobile phone) and stare at it half the day and be in touch with so many people and with so many friends. But what happened to their real friends? They don’t even have any anymore.
So this lack of reality is very scary, I feel, the lack of being in touch with reality. So many people are in this artificial world and everything they know is digital information. For them the whole world has become information. They don’t even know anymore what stories are because they believe so much in story selling that storytelling is something they are not responding to anymore. They don’t know it anymore.
A photography exhibition of your works on the vast landscape of Australia was mounted at the Goethe Institute in Delhi more than two decades ago. During your road journey in India are there any photography you have done or any stories you have found that could become a photography or film project about and in India like you shot Perfect Days in Japan?
It is totally in the realm of possibility. Now after these two-three days in Delhi, we are going to be on the road, just on our own. I don’t have to do any interviews, show any movies, just travel and be on the road, hopefully take a few photographs and hopefully realise why I have really come to India.
You had two movies in 2023, one documentary (Anselm) and one feature film (Perfect Days). What is art for you in this frightening world of refugee crisis, climate catastrophe, war and fear?
Art more than ever has an obligation to have the truth be respected. As the truth is such an endangered species today, I think arts’ most noble job today is to stick to the truth. And to remind people it does exist, and there are facts. And history is full of facts, the climate crisis is a fact. Mr Trump loves to sip his Coke with his straw and has now said that the ban on plastic straws should be abandoned because plastic straws are such a great sign of civilisation. Because these guys just don’t know anything. If you don’t know anything you can be as stupid as you want. But if you know, and the people would know a little bit more truth, they wouldn’t be allowed to be that stupid anymore.