Wim Wenders loves to write on long-haul flights. “I never watch movies on planes,” says the 79-year-old director of Wings of Desire, Perfect Days and Paris, Texas. On the few occasions that he has made use of the in-flight entertainment, he found himself “liking films that later on embarrassed me—I think they put something into the air.”

Wenders is, appropriately enough, sharing all this in a long email, written en route to Mumbai. He’s visiting the city for the first time: Over the next few weeks, he’s presenting 18 of the more than 50 films he has made in five Indian cities. It’s one of several major retrospectives celebrating the prolific career of an artist who says he sees himself, first and foremost, as a traveler.

“Usually, I am not good at home, sitting at my desk,” he writes. For Wenders, creativity flows more freely when he is in motion, whether that’s on a train (“my best ‘setting’”) or traveling via plane—“A journey really sets me free.” Music, he says, is indispensable to his process: “I put on my headphones and I look out of the window. And then I start writing.”1

This August, to celebrate his 80th birthday, the Bundeskunsthalle museum in Bonn is honoring Wenders’ career with an immersive, large-scale exhibition, showcasing his photography as well as his films. But while the world might be looking back at a half century of his films, documentaries, photographs and writing, the artist himself is still working, still writing, and very much still dreaming of the future—specifically a science-fiction film that he is determined won’t be dystopian. “I find that we have gotten used to accepting so many unbearable things, like wars and violence and dictatorship and severe poverty and inequality,” he says. “Only a film, in which all this is gone, could open our minds.”

Wenders is an eternal optimist, a German romantic who, many years ago, set out in search of the American dream. It started as a childhood thing. “My hometown of Düsseldorf was bombed severely at the end of World War II and largely destroyed,” he says. Wenders was born in 1945, the year the war ended, and for as long as he can remember has yearned to travel. “I grew up in a city of ruins. As a kid you take it for granted that the world looks like that.”2

Leafing through his grandfather’s old encyclopedias, he was surprised to learn that “the rest of the world looked much more beautiful.” He dragged his parents into museums and, in newspapers, he discovered skyscrapers and American cities, with shiny cars and wide, spacious avenues. His grandmother helped him decipher the names of the places he encountered studying atlases and maps. “I was longing to discover the world—as soon as possible.”

Wim Wenders loves to write on long-haul flights. “I never watch movies on planes,” says the 79-year-old director of Wings of Desire, Perfect Days and Paris, Texas. On the few occasions that he has made use of the in-flight entertainment, he found himself “liking films that later on embarrassed me—I think they put something into the air.”

Wenders is, appropriately enough, sharing all this in a long email, written en route to Mumbai. He’s visiting the city for the first time: Over the next few weeks, he’s presenting 18 of the more than 50 films he has made in five Indian cities. It’s one of several major retrospectives celebrating the prolific career of an artist who says he sees himself, first and foremost, as a traveler.

“Usually, I am not good at home, sitting at my desk,” he writes. For Wenders, creativity flows more freely when he is in motion, whether that’s on a train (“my best ‘setting’”) or traveling via plane—“A journey really sets me free.” Music, he says, is indispensable to his process: “I put on my headphones and I look out of the window. And then I start writing.”1

This August, to celebrate his 80th birthday, the Bundeskunsthalle museum in Bonn is honoring Wenders’ career with an immersive, large-scale exhibition, showcasing his photography as well as his films. But while the world might be looking back at a half century of his films, documentaries, photographs and writing, the artist himself is still working, still writing, and very much still dreaming of the future—specifically a science-fiction film that he is determined won’t be dystopian. “I find that we have gotten used to accepting so many unbearable things, like wars and violence and dictatorship and severe poverty and inequality,” he says. “Only a film, in which all this is gone, could open our minds.”

Wenders is an eternal optimist, a German romantic who, many years ago, set out in search of the American dream. It started as a childhood thing. “My hometown of Düsseldorf was bombed severely at the end of World War II and largely destroyed,” he says. Wenders was born in 1945, the year the war ended, and for as long as he can remember has yearned to travel. “I grew up in a city of ruins. As a kid you take it for granted that the world looks like that.”2

Leafing through his grandfather’s old encyclopedias, he was surprised to learn that “the rest of the world looked much more beautiful.” He dragged his parents into museums and, in newspapers, he discovered skyscrapers and American cities, with shiny cars and wide, spacious avenues. His grandmother helped him decipher the names of the places he encountered studying atlases and maps. “I was longing to discover the world—as soon as possible.”