Wim Wenders Withdraws 1975 Film After Nastassja Kinski’s Decades-Long Campaign
Acclaimed German director Wim Wenders has withdrawn his 1975 film Wrong Move from all distribution channels following sustained pressure from actress Nastassja Kinski, who appeared topless in the film at the age of 13.
Wenders, 80, issued a formal apology on Wednesday via the website of the Wim Wenders Foundation, the non-profit organisation that owns the film. “Streaming, TV and distribution partners have been instructed to no longer make the film publicly accessible,” his statement read.
Fifteen Years of Unheeded Requests
Kinski, now 65, revealed last month in an interview with German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung that she had spent 15 years attempting to persuade Wenders to act — without success. The disclosure prompted a swift public backlash across German media.
“That was my first film, he was my first director and he didn’t protect me,” Kinski told the paper. “Even though I didn’t know much aged 13, I knew that that was not ok.”
Public Criticism Forces a Reversal
Speaking at the German film awards ceremony last Friday, Wenders had initially stopped short of withdrawing the film, suggesting that any retrospective editing would require a broader industry-wide discussion. The remarks drew immediate condemnation.
Fellow filmmaker and Babylon Berlin actor Julius Feldmeier published an open letter to Wenders stating: “It’s your responsibility alone to set things right.” The criticism proved decisive in prompting Wenders’s subsequent reversal.
In his Wednesday statement, Wenders offered an unqualified apology. “As the only person responsible at the time for Wrong Move who is still here, I recognise that Nastassja Kinski should have been better protected back then,” he wrote. “For that, I apologise to you, Nastassja, unreservedly, no ifs or buts.”
Background
Wrong Move marked Kinski’s acting debut; she played a mute teenage acrobat. The daughter of the late actor Klaus Kinski, she went on to appear in more than 60 films across Europe and the United States, including Wenders’s own Paris, Texas in 1984.
This is not the first time Kinski has successfully pursued the removal of exploitative material. Her legal team reached a distribution agreement with broadcaster NDR over a television film directed by Das Boot‘s Wolfgang Petersen, in which she appeared naked at the age of 15.
Wenders remains one of the most celebrated figures in postwar German cinema, with a body of work that includes Wings of Desire, Buena Vista Social Club, and the Academy Award-nominated Perfect Days.