Two angels wander through a divided Berlin unseen by humans, paying tender witness to the thoughts, anxieties and dreams of the people they come across (among them, Columbo star Peter Falk, playing himself) — and trying to instill hope in those who despair. One angel (Bruno Ganz) falls in love with a trapeze artist. He wants to live a normal life “to be excited by a meal, the curve of a neck . . .” and feel the ground beneath his feet.
Recently restored in 4K, Wim Wenders’ iconic film shifts elegantly between black and white (for the world as the angels perceive it) and colour (mundane reality as we know it) — the same strategy that Michael Powell applied to his celestial romance, A Matter of Life and Death some 40 years earlier. Veteran cinematographer Henri Alekan worked on such classics as Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bete and William Wyler’s Roman Holiday.
Few films are so rich, so intriguing, or so ambitious.
Geoff Andrew, Time Out
The film evokes a mood of reverie, elegy and meditation.
Roger Ebert
One of Wenders’s most stunning achievements.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Media Partner
Wim Wenders
Bruno Ganz, Solveig Dommartin, Peter Falk
West Germany/France
1987
In German and English with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Credits
Screenwriter
Wim Wenders, Peter Handle
Cinematography
Henri Alekan
Editor
Peter Przygodda
Original Music
Jürgen Knieper
Art Director
Heidi Lüdi
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