Wim Wenders on cinema, the failed European dream, and his new film 'Perfect Days'

euronews (in English)

Euronews Culture sits down with the recipient of this year's Prix Lumière: the great Wim Wenders.

Transcript

00:00 [music]

00:11 You are the recipient of the 15th Lumière Prize.

00:16 What does it mean to you?

00:19 We know it's an honorary prize, but also a highly symbolic one.

00:23 What does this prize mean to you?

00:26 Symbolism is already in the word.

00:30 Light is the source of cinema.

00:35 They invented electricity.

00:39 Ten years later, there was cinema.

00:43 That's what makes a projection, it's light.

00:47 We make films with light.

00:50 The invention is light, in my head.

00:55 Light is the essence of life.

00:59 This prize is highly symbolic.

01:05 It's a joy more than any other prize I've ever received.

01:10 I heard a fan say,

01:13 "I like being at home, but I also like being everywhere."

01:16 He lives in France, as we know.

01:19 Do you have that feeling?

01:22 For me, cinema has never been a national history.

01:26 I discovered it in Paris.

01:29 I wanted to be a painter, and I discovered cinema.

01:32 It changed my life.

01:35 I was born in 1945.

01:37 There was no Europe.

01:39 Europe was a territory of war.

01:43 A history of many wars,

01:46 especially between France and Germany.

01:49 When my Franco-German career began,

01:53 it was a time of great joy.

01:56 When De Gaulle and Adnan shook hands,

01:59 I was in tears.

02:01 For me, it was the future.

02:03 It was an incredible future.

02:05 It was utopia.

02:07 Unfortunately, there are too many people

02:11 who have the virus to forget all that,

02:15 and who make promises to us

02:19 about a new nationalism in all European countries.

02:23 We saw what it led to.

02:26 It was a great disaster.

02:29 This loss of memory.

02:33 We wanted to ask you a question about "Perfect Eyes,"

02:37 which shook us in Cannes for months.

02:40 And especially about the poetry in this film.

02:45 It's as if it was filling a void.

02:49 Through the story of this man

02:53 who has empathy,

02:56 who serves the public.

02:58 Was it like that for you, to fill this void?

03:02 I felt that when I finally returned to Japan.

03:08 With this vague idea,

03:11 I preferred to make a documentary

03:16 about architects and their public works,

03:20 rather than a social project about toilets.

03:24 And now I've discovered the meaning of the common good,

03:29 which exists in Japan in a very strong way.

03:33 The love of detail.

03:38 While in Europe, it was very sad

03:43 that the big victim of the pandemic

03:47 was the meaning of the common good.

03:51 So I wanted to tell a story

03:54 about why Japan, for me,

03:57 represented so many good social ideas

04:01 about living together

04:04 and about the future for humanity.

04:08 [MUSIC]

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