German filmmaker Wim Wenders on Monday said he merges documentary elements with fiction in his storytelling, blurring the lines between the two entirely different forms of filmmaking.

“I make documentaries with a lot of fictional elements and I make fictional films with a lot of documentary elements,” the 79-year old auteur said during a masterclass in Kolkata.

Wenders is on his maiden tour in India with a five-city retrospective of 18 of his films. Titled ‘King of the Road’, the tour kicked off in Mumbai on February 6 and travelled to Thiruvananthapuram before coming to Kolkata on February 16. Next, Wenders will visit New Delhi and then Pune, where the tour will culminate on February 23.

The early years

Recalling his early years, the Paris, Texas helmer shared how he initially pursued medical studies at his father's insistence but ultimately found it unfulfilling. Wanting to follow his passion for painting, he set his sights on Paris, hoping to enroll in an art academy, but his efforts were unsuccessful.

Instead, Wenders began spending time at the cinematheque, where he watched an astonishing 1,000 films in a year. It was then that he realised painting lacked the depth and complexity of cinema, which he found to be a more powerful and immersive medium.

“I was introduced to movies by a great collector and film historian, and I understood the scope of the history of cinema. I understood that movies had access to people’s lives in different ways, in different countries. It gave me an idea that cinema was something very complete and almost sacred. I was in awe of the history of cinema,” the Tokyo-Ga maker said.

“My first movie was 4 minutes — 60mm daylight reels were 4 minutes — single shots, beginning to end, because nobody had ever told me that one could cut or stop and turn the camera and shoot something else. So I always used the 4 minutes on one shot. But I was very happy with it, and my first movie was extremely ‘meditative’. Let's use that word,” Wenders shared.

‘Place is an important function in my films’

Wenders revealed that he loved telling stories revolving around places. “Most of my films are started by the desire to make a film in a certain place and then find the story that could take place there. So place is a very important function of a film for me and a very important axis for storytelling.”

“Storytelling is to live a story together with your characters. They’re not functions of a story but the other way around. The story is a function of the characters. And if they live through something, then there is a story. I love that always so much more,” he added.

Elaborating on his approach to filmmaking, Wenders explained that he makes documentaries with a lot of fictional elements and vice versa. “I realised my storytelling always had a secret documentary dream,” he explains citing Perfect Days (2023) as an example. “It is completely sharp like you would shoot a documentary. But of course it was a story. It was an inventive character. By now I do not know anymore to separate them and I've given up on the distinction,” the auteur told an audience in Kolkata.

‘I was amazed how patient Ray was with me’

Wenders also recalled meeting Satyajit Ray at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1973. “I was a young man and I had just made my fourth film. And there he was, the man himself, standing in the lobby of the Berlin Film Festival. He was standing there having a coffee all by himself. And I thought, this is my chance. I approached him and he answered all my questions. I had to look up to him because he was really tall. I was amazed how patient he was with me,” he shared.

‘I'm completely in awe of Kōji Yakusho’

Wenders wrapped the masterclass session with an anecdote from the shooting of his latest film Perfect Days. He revealed that the lead actor Kōji Yakusho, who plays Hirayama in the film, was driving in real Tokyo traffic for the final scene. “Hirayama plays Nina Simone’s Feeling Good. And he does something that I did not expect. He becomes the song. I look at him listening to the song and living the song in a way that I never thought possible. I'm completely in awe. I've never thought an actor is able to just listen to a song while driving a car, a tricky little tiny car through traffic and being able to listen to a song in that way,” Wenders said to a thunderous applause from the audience.