10 Best Wim Wenders Movies, Ranked

Wim Wenders might not be a household name to all, but within the world of international cinema, he’s highly regarded for both the length of his filmmaking career and the surprising consistency of it. Now in his late 70s, Wenders directed his first feature back in the early 1970s, meaning he’s now been making movies for over half a century. Unlike some filmmakers, few would accuse Wenders of losing his edge or creative spark as he’s gotten older, with his latest film, 2023’s Perfect Days, arguably ranking up there with his classics.

Speaking of ranking, that’s what the following aims to do: giving a rundown of the best of the best titles within Wenders’s filmography, and including both feature films and a handful of documentaries, given he’s remarkably talented at making both. By no means are they the only Wim Wenders films worth watching, but many provide good starting points for those interested in digging into his work. These noteworthy films are ranked below, beginning with the very good and ending with the masterful.

10 ‘Buena Vista Social Club’ (1999)

Featuring: Compay Segundo, Eliades Ochoa, Ry Cooder

Feeling like a cross between a documentary and something of a concert film, with all the live music shown throughout, Buena Vista Social Club ranks up there among Wim Wenders’s most popular documentary features. It shows various musicians from Cuba coming together to record a folk album in Havana, with the film depicting live performances, recording sessions, and interviews with the musicians about their lives.

Like many films directed by Wenders, Buena Vista Social Club emphasizes an overall mood or feeling more so than it aims to tell a specific, constantly forward-moving story, being even lighter on narrative than most standard documentaries. The approach may alienate some, but the film’s worth at least one watch regardless, owing to the love Wenders shows towards these unsung musicians, and for the light the film sheds on the music scene in Cuba.

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9 ‘Kings of the Road’ (1976)

Starring: Rüdiger Vogler, Hanns Zischler, Lisa Kreuzer

One thing that becomes apparent when looking over the filmography of Wim Wenders is that the director loves himself a road movie. Plenty of Wenders’s films qualify within this sub-genre, including 1976’s Kings of the Road… which really shouldn’t be all that surprising, considering the title, and the fact this film fits within a thematic set of films quite literally known as The Road Trilogy.

Kings of the Road is an ambitious film, and something of an epic, considering its runtime clocks in at just four minutes shy of three hours. It follows two troubled men who team up together and go on a road trip along the East-German border that ran alongside what was once West Germany. It’s certainly light on narrative, again, but it’s beautifully shot throughout and empathetic to its characters, with the physical and emotional journey they make throughout ultimately ensuring Kings of the Road is a rewarding experience to watch.

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8 ‘Tokyo-Ga’ (1985)

Featuring: Yûharu Atsuta, Werner Herzog, Chishū Ryū

Japan’s film industry remains strong to this day, partly thanks to acclaimed filmmakers like Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu paving the way in past decades for contemporary filmmakers working today. Wim Wenders is a particularly big fan of Ozu’s, as Tokyo-Ga demonstrates, as this documentary sees Wenders traveling to Japan to see how the country is compared to how it was depicted in Ozu’s 1930s-1960s films, as well as interview people who worked with the legendary Japanese director.

Wenders also takes a look at Japanese life in general, and while those segments of Tokyo-Ga are alright, it’s at its best when Wenders is interviewing the likes of regular cinematographer for Ozu, Yûharu Atsuta, as well as Chishu Ryu, who acted in many Ozu films. He even runs into a couple of other documentarians/filmmakers while there, including fellow German director Werner Herzog and the enigmatic French documentarian Chris Marker.

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7 ‘Alice in the Cities’ (1974)

Starring: Rüdiger Vogler, Yella Rottländer, Lisa Kreuzer

Throughout much of the 1970s, one gets the sense that a young Wim Wenders was still honing his craft, to some extent, with 1974’s Alice in the Cities standing as perhaps his first truly great film. It was the first film featured in Wenders’s aforementioned Road Trilogy, and has a plot that revolves around a journalist unexpectedly finding himself having to look after a young girl.

The road movie aspect of it all comes into play when it becomes apparent that the young girl wants to be reunited with her grandmother, to which the journalist agrees to help her. Alice in the Cities is a quiet and rather simple film, at its core, but it proves to be moving, visually appealing to look at throughout, and rewarding for those who enjoy character studies that aren’t afraid to let the plot take a backseat sometimes.

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6 ‘The Salt of the Earth’ (2014)

Co-director: Juliano Ribeiro Salgado

Another very compelling documentary by Wim Wenders, The Salt of the Earth saw him collaborating with a co-director: Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, the son of the documentary’s main subject. That central figure within The Salt of the Earth is Brazilian photojournalist Sebastião Salgado, best known for his work that tackles themes surrounding environmentalism and the plights of workers in developing nations.

The Salt of the Earth is a comprehensive and largely engaging look at all the things Sebastião Salgado has accomplished during his career, and is fittingly visually striking throughout (it kind of has to be, given the eye-catching nature of Salgado’s photographic work). It’s well worth watching, even if one’s unfamiliar with the central figure covered in the documentary, as his life is an interesting one, and The Salt of the Earth does go satisfyingly in-depth, as a biographical documentary.

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5 ‘The American Friend’ (1977)

Starring: Dennis Hopper, Bruno Ganz, Lisa Kreuzer

Good film adaptations of the work of Patricia Highsmith really tend to hit the spot, for those looking for compelling crime movies, and The American Friend is thankfully one of the best of the bunch. It’s one of numerous films that adapts a story revolving around the notorious Tom Ripley, in this case being a unique and very compelling take on the 1974 novel Ripley’s Game.

The American Friend revolves around Tom Ripley (played here by Dennis Hopper) convincing a terminally ill German man (played by Bruno Ganz) to become a hitman. It unfolds slowly, but in a way that’s persistently intense, and both Hopper and Ganz give some career-best performances here. It ratchets up the tension perfectly throughout, and not only is it one of Wim Wenders’s best movies overall, but there’s a strong argument to be made that it’s also his most exciting film.

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4 ‘Wings of Desire’ (1987)

Starring: Bruno Ganz, Solveig Dommartin, Otto Sander

Wings of Desire is a fantastic fantasy film, and also one that has a good deal of bittersweet romance throughout. It tells a story that might sound cheesy on paper, but the execution here really works. At its most basic, Wings of Desire is about a pair of angels who watch over humanity but aren’t supposed to directly interact with anyone… which one angel struggles with, after he realizes he’s fallen in love with a human woman.

Ignore the American remake City of Angels, which kind of misfires and misunderstands what made Wings of Desire work, and instead becomes an overly sentimental and kind of cheesy mess. The original is restrained in some ways, but also very bold and expressive in other ways, particularly when it comes to how beautiful the film looks, as well as how undeniably striking the overall style is.

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3 ‘Paris, Texas’ (1984)

Starring: Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski, Dean Stockwell

Another slow-paced yet absorbing movie about travel (perhaps enough to be labeled as another Wim Wenders road movie), Paris, Texas is one of the most beloved films by the director (and a favorite of director Akira Kurosawa). It follows a man wandering out into the desert after seeming to forget much of his life and who he was, leading to his brother needing to save him and then trying to help him regain his memory.

Paris, Texas runs for almost two-and-a-half hours, and certainly doesn’t have much by way of action or white-knuckle excitement, so viewers need to approach it with a good helping of patience. Those who are willing to go along for the ride that Paris, Texas provides will be rewarded, because the slow-burn and somewhat mysterious story does build fantastically into the film’s second half, becoming a truly moving and memorably evocative viewing experience in the process.

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2 ‘Perfect Days’ (2023)

Starring: Koji Yakusho, Tokio Emoto, Arisa Nakano

As mentioned before, Wim Wenders has remained active as a filmmaker into the 2020s, with Perfect Days arguably being up there with some of the best releases of the decade so far. Befitting its title, it’s a nearly perfect film for what it tries to do, though on the surface, it doesn’t appear to be doing all that much… at least at first.

Essentially, Perfect Days follows the life of a seemingly content man who lives alone and works as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo, dedicating himself wholeheartedly to his job during the day and taking part in various hobbies when he’s not working. Perfect Days shows beauty in simple situations, and provides insight into how to be content with a straightforward life, even though the main character’s past does begin catching up with him in the film’s second half, to some extent. It’s a brilliantly made slice-of-life type of movie, and all viewers who are able to adjust to the film’s unique rhythm will inevitably come away feeling emotionally fulfilled.

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1 ‘Until the End of the World’ (1991)

Starring: William Hurt, Solveig Dommartin, Sam Neill

Wim Wenders made a large-scale and ambitious road movie with Kings of the Road, but that one pales in comparison – when it comes to scope and ambition – to 1991’s Until the End of the World. If you could only ever watch a single Wim Wenders film, this would be the one to pick, because it seems to contain just about everything the filmmaker feels passionate about or interested in. It crosses various genres, too, being something of an adventure/drama/thriller/romance/science fiction film, alongside being an epic road movie.

Until the End of the World looks at technology and the way it both brings people together and makes them feel lonely, and, broadly speaking, follows two people thrust together seemingly by fate as they embark on a huge journey around the world, visiting multiple countries in the process. It’s beautiful and surprisingly emotional, has a fantastic cast, and undoubtedly contains one of the greatest soundtracks in film history, with artists like Depeche Mode, Patti Smith, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Elvis Costello, Talking Heads, Lou Reed, and R.E.M., among others, all recording songs for the film.

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NEXT: Every Movie Directed by Damien Chazelle, Ranked