Wings of Desire
| Wings of Desire | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Wim Wenders |
| Produced by | Wim Wenders Anatole Dauman |
| Written by | Wim Wenders Peter Handke Richard Reitinger |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Jürgen Knieper Laurent Petitgand |
| Cinematography | Henri Alekan |
| Edited by | Peter Przygodda |
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Production
company |
Road Movies Filmproduktion
Westdeutscher Rundfunk |
| Distributed by | Basis-Film-Verleih GmbH (West Germany) Argos Films (France) Orion Pictures (U.S.) |
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Release date
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Running time
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127 minutes |
| Country | West Germany France |
| Language | German English French Turkish Hebrew Spanish |
| Budget | €2.5 million |
| Box office | USD$3.2 million |
Wings of Desire (German: Der Himmel über Berlin, "The Sky/Heaven Over Berlin") is a 1987 Franco-German romantic fantasy film directed by Wim Wenders. The film is about invisible, immortal angels who populate Berlin and listen to the thoughts of the human inhabitants and comfort those who are in distress. Even though the city is densely populated, many of the people are isolated or estranged from their loved ones. One of the angels, played by Bruno Ganz, falls in love with a beautiful, lonely trapeze artist. The angel chooses to become human so that he can experience the human sensory pleasures, ranging from enjoying food to touching a loved one, and so that he can experience human love with the trapeze artist. The film is shot in both a rich, sepia-toned black-and-white and color, with the former being used to represent the world as experienced by the angels. Wim Wenders won best director award both at Cannes film festival and European film Awards for the film. The film was selected as the West German entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy award and BAFTA award, and was accepted as a nominee for the latter. The film has cult status and is included in Criterion Collection since 2009.
The film was followed by a sequel - Faraway, So Close!, in 1993. City of Angels, an American remake, was released in 1998.
Set in contemporary West Berlin (at the time still enclosed by the Berlin Wall), Wings of Desire follows two angels, Damiel and Cassiel, as they roam the city, unseen and unheard by its human inhabitants, observing and listening to the diverse thoughts of Berliners: a pregnant woman in an ambulance on the way to the hospital, a painter struggling to find inspiration, a broken man who thinks his girlfriend no longer loves him. Their is, as Cassiel says, to "assemble, testify, preserve" reality. In addition to the story of two angels, the film is also a meditation on Berlin's past, present, and future. Damiel and Cassiel have always existed as angels; they existed in Berlin before it was a city, and before there were even any humans.
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Wikipedia