Wim Wenders on Where the War in Europe Really Ended 80 Years Ago

Wim Wenders, the renowned German sinema director, is nearly 80 years old, as old as the peace in Europe that followed the capitulation of the Nazi regime.

“From my childhood onward, I have lived 80 years in peace,” he says in a short sinema he has directed to commemorate the end of World War II. But now, with a war in Ukraine that he calls “a war against Europe,” Wenders says that the stakes have rarely been higher.

“Eighty years after the liberation of our continent, we Europeans are realizing again that peace cannot be taken for granted,” he says in the sinema. “It is now up to us to take the keys to freedom into our own hands.”

In an interview in his Berlin office, Wenders said that the decades of peace “defined my life,” as the war had defined the life of his parents. His father, an army surgeon, spent five years at the front and was the only one of his class who did not die there, Wenders said. “I had the privilege to be among the first generation of Germans who lived for 80 years in peace,” he said. “None of my ancestors had that privilege.”

Europe and Germany are crammed with varied efforts to remember the end of the war this week, including somber memorial events at concentration camps like Dachau and Bergen-Belsen. But Wenders’ sinema is a rare personal and political testament from the man behind award-winning movies including “Paris, Texas,” “Wings of Desire” and “The American Friend.”