German film director Wim Wenders has withdrawn an early film from distribution after a years-long campaign by its star, Nastassja Kinski.
The actor was just 13 when she starred in the 1975 Wenders film Falsche Bewegung (Wrong Move), which includes a controversial sexualised scene where she is seen wearing only pants alongside an older man.
“Though I didn’t know much at the age of 13, I could tell already that this wasn’t right,” said Kinski in a recent interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung daily.
On Instagram, under a still from the film, she addressed Wenders directly: “I wished for justice back then, but at least now Wim Wenders.”
RM Block
Responding in 2024 to her long-running demand that he cut the scene, Wenders said he understood Kinski’s “current perceptions and feelings”.
After another push by the actor in recent months, and threat of legal action, Wenders addressed the controversy last Friday at the German Film Awards.
Receiving a lifetime achievement award, the 80-year-old said he would not film that scene in the same way now.
“But I can’t blame the 29-year-old young man I was then, 50 years ago, who made a film of his time, who wanted, in a way, to capture the zeitgeist,” said Wenders, who went on to work with Kinski in two further films.
“I deeply admired her, I still do,” added Wenders.
In his defence, Wenders cited how director Steven Spielberg said he had made a “mistake” by re-editing E.T. for its 20th anniversary release, digitally replacing police guns with walkie-talkies.
“E. T. is a product of its era,” said Spielberg to a Time magazine event in 2023. “No film should be revised based on the lenses we now are either voluntarily or being forced to peer through.”
Onstage in Berlin on Friday, Wenders said he felt “alone” with his dilemma and asked for a wider debate on the rights and wrongs of re-editing films after their initial release.
His plea met with a lukewarm response, with many suggesting Wenders was trying to shift responsibility for his particular problem on to the wider film industry.
In a leader article, the Süddeutsche Zeitung mocked the German director for framing Kinski’s demand at the award ceremony as “a threat to the very freedom of cinema itself, the freedom of every single artist in the room”.
“Anyone watching and listening to his words could only feel stunned,” the newspaper concluded.
The Tagesspiegel daily suggested the problem was no longer the scene itself but how the director had “avoided confrontation” with Kinski for years.
Kinski’s lawyer Christian Schertz criticised the Wenders speech for implying the director was a victim of “censorship or cancel culture”.
On Wednesday, the Wim Wenders Foundation said it was withdrawing Wrong Move, until further notice, from distribution and all streaming platforms.
