Wim Wenders is a master of modern cinema. The 79-year-old German filmmaker’s oeuvre includes Paris, Texas (1984), Wings of Desire (1987) and, more recently, Perfect Days (2023). Invited by Film Heritage Foundation, Wenders will be in India — his first trip here — today. In an email interview with TOI, he talks about the future of films and the artistic challenges before the visual art.

My driving force is curiosity and to pose, again and again, the burning question: “How should we live?” The conditions under which we live as humanity change constantly and fast. We’re adjusting constantly. My films are not necessarily giving answers to that question, but they’re constantly in search of possible answers. Maybe the most poignant one in that regard was Until The End Of The World, a film that anticipated the impact of the digital revolution on our visual culture. It was shot in 1990 and tried to look 10 years ahead into the future; it takes place in the year 2000. Now that year is long gone, but the film still offers a powerful first look at what was going to happen to mankind.

I’m not scared of AI. But I’m deeply disturbed by the deterioration of truth in public life and the massive and ever-growing amount of lies, of misleading and false information. We have huge parts of populations unaware of the propaganda and falsehoods they take as ‘reality’, for granted. The worst, however, is the common disinterest and lack of knowledge for history, even among politicians. You’d think that people wouldn’t go for the same nationalist paroles and promises that already ruined our civilization in enough wars and conflicts. But they seem eager to repeat the same recipes.

Streamers grow bigger and bigger. They were propelled fast-forward by the pandemic. They’re slowly pushing independent distributors and producers out of business. Also, a growing number of young people have gotten estranged from the experience of seeing films in theatres, together with others. They got used to getting all that “content” and much more at home. Some of them never really experienced movie theatres as a social institution, so they don’t even miss it. I find that a sad development in an overall world culture that makes people more and more solitary.

I’m happy that right now, all over the world, films are being restored, so that some of our greatest cultural treasures of the 20th century are being preserved. In India, the Film Heritage Foundation is doing amazing work. It is our connection and dedication to film preservation, I guess, that gave Shivendra Singh Dungarpur the idea to invite me to India for this five-city retrospective. My foundation is also extremely engaged in this field. Fifteen of the 18 films we show in India are restored versions. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to talking with Indian audiences!

I tend to agree with Camus. Football can be a great metaphor for the best in us, morally and as far as ‘character’ is concerned. But ever since he said this, the world has evolved, and not really for the better. “The Beautiful Game” has been extremely commercialized and therefore, much to my dismay, has lost some of its moral qualities and even some of its playfulness. I still follow it passionately, and I have my favourite teams in other leagues, not just in the Bundesliga in Germany. I follow Liverpool in England, Naples in Italy — both not always so much at the top of the game as today. Some of my teams have even disappeared in second leagues in France or Spain. But I keep my hopes up for them.