For cinephiles across the world, few names evoke the kind of reverence that Wim Wenders does. A poet of the moving image, a chronicler of the human soul, and a restless traveler who captures the beauty of solitude and the transient nature of existence, Wenders has long been a filmmaker who sees the world differently. When I recently sat down with the legendary German auteur for an exclusive interview for The Sunday Guardian, our conversation wove through his encounters with masters like Satyajit Ray and Akira Kurosawa, the artistic evolution of his Oscar-nominated ‘Perfect Days’, and the existential poetics that define his cinema.
One of the most striking moments in our conversation was when I asked Wenders if he saw his film Perfect Days, shot in Japan, as akin to Kurosawa’s ‘Dersu Uzala’, a rare departure for the Japanese maestro who stepped outside his homeland to tell a story. Wenders, ever reflective, took a pause before answering.
“I don’t believe in comparing films,” he said, “but I do acknowledge that ‘Dersu Uzala’ was a departure for Kurosawa, just as ‘Perfect Days’ was for me. When you are outside your home, you start seeing things differently. There’s a certain curiosity, an inquisitive gaze that a stranger carries.
Wenders’ reverence for ‘Dersu Uzala’ was evident.
“It’s easier to love
Having just visited the home of Satyajit Ray in Kolkata, where he met the legendary filmmaker’s son, Sandip Ray, Wenders spoke of the experience with a sense of quiet reverence.
“You can’t help but imagine Ray himself taking that same cranky elevator, looking out at the courtyard from the window,” Wenders mused.
“His chair is still there. His bookshelves, filled with the choices of a man who was universally interested in everything. I didn’t get to take all the books out, but I looked at them closely. That’s the first thing I do when I visit someone’s home—I check out their books.”
He reminisced about his first meeting with Ray at the Berlinale in the 1970s, a moment in cinematic history that felt alive again as he stood in the very space where Ray had created his masterpieces.
“It was a calm place,” he added.
“There was this ventilator going on. The room was high, and that made me happy for him—because he was such a tall man. I remember when I spoke to him, I had to look up, which doesn’t happen to me often.”
Another memory Wenders holds dear is his visit to Akira Kurosawa’s home.
“He showed me his house, his collection of rocks and stones,” Wenders recalled with a chuckle. “He had shelves filled only with stones. And I was so happy because I collect stones too—like an idiot! I come home from remote places with a suitcase full of them. Customs officials always wonder what’s in my bag, and when they see it’s just stones, they think I’m mad. So, when I saw Kurosawa’s collection, I felt an instant kinship.”
It was a rare and deeply personal insight into Kurosawa’s world—one that few have had the privilege to witness.
One of Wenders’ most unforgettable moments with Kurosawa happened during their conversation at the Japanese master’s home. Wenders had prepared a long list of elaborate questions, but Kurosawa was answering in brief, monosyllabic responses. Just when Wenders feared the meeting was turning into a disaster, he decided to ask an impromptu question about Kurosawa’s use of rain to evoke certain moods in Kurosawa’s 1950 masterpiece ‘Rashomon’.
“Suddenly, everything changed,” Wenders recalled.
“It was like I had opened a door. Kurosawa began talking passionately about not just rain but also wind, fire, and weather as elements of storytelling. He spoke about their aesthetics and their technical implications—how rain had to be thickened with ink so that it would be visible on camera, how he used wind to amplify emotions, how fire created contrast. It was a masterclass. And there I was, sitting right next to him, absorbing every word. It was the best seat in the house.”
Originally,‘Perfect Days’ wasn’t meant to be a narrative film. Wenders had been invited to document The Tokyo Toilet project, a collaboration between 15 renowned architects who designed public toilets across the city.
“It was initially going to be a photography project,” he revealed.
“Another idea was to make a documentary on these architects and their tiny creations. But the idea of spending a month shooting a documentary on toilets—it just didn’t feel right.”
Then, something shifted.
“It was just after Tokyo had emerged from the longest lockdown in history. I saw how people revered their parks and public spaces in a way I hadn’t seen elsewhere. In my country, in America, the pandemic had eroded the sense of the common good. But in Japan, it was the opposite. People remembered how precious shared spaces were.”
That realization led to ‘Perfect Days’, a film about the quiet dignity of a man who cleans these public spaces, an ode to life’s simplest joys.
The conversation naturally veered to the film’s unforgettable final scene, where Hirayama, played by Kōji Yakusho, drives through Tokyo traffic listening to Nina Simone’s Feeling Good.
“The lyrics were on the first page of my script,” Wenders revealed.
“They encapsulated everything the film stood for—the idea of living in the moment. But I hadn’t planned to include the song. It felt almost too obvious. Then, as we neared the end of the shoot, I realised I had to let Hirayama go in a way that made people feel he would continue his life, knowing he had made the right choices. So I took the song from the first page of my script and put it on the last.”
The scene, as Wenders described it, was pure instinct. “We just placed the camera in the car, let him drive, and let the music do the rest.”
And with that, the film—like the man at its center—simply drives off into the world, quietly leaving its mark, just as Wenders has done time and again in his storied career.
Whether in the quiet corners of Tokyo, the timeless space of Ray’s home, or the rock-filled shelves of Kurosawa’s study, Wenders finds poetry in the ordinary. His cinema, at its best, is an act of looking—of seeing the world with fresh, loving eyes. As our conversation drew to a close, I was left with the distinct feeling that Wenders himself is still that curious traveler, always searching, always learning, always ready to embrace the beauty of the world, one frame at a time.