Paris, Texas

Wim Wenders’ unabashed love letter to America is brought to vivid life in his Palme d’Or‑winning masterpiece about a broken man trying to piece his family back together.

A ragged amnesiac is found wandering the unforgiving Texas desert. The stranger is Travis (Harry Dean Stanton), who is taken in by the authorities and handed over to his concerned brother Walt (Dean Stockwell). It transpires that over the four years Travis has been missing, Walt and his wife have been raising his young son, who was abandoned by Travis and his wife Jane (Nastassja Kinski).

As Travis begins to piece together his lost years in the desert, he decides to set out on one last journey to bring his fractured family back together again.

Curator’s note
Paris, Texas is one of those rare film beasts where everything just comes together perfectly. A lightning‑in‑a‑bottle moment and a small miracle considering how much Wenders and Pulitzer Prize‑winning writer Sam Shepard agonised over the script, particularly the ending, which was in contention for most of the shoot.

The results are simply exquisite. An epic, mythical road movie that is painfully intimate at its core – essentially, the ultimate Wim Wenders film.

Elevating proceedings is the now‑iconic Ry Cooder score (he would later collaborate with Wenders on the Oscar‑winning Buena Vista Social Club, 1999), Robby Müller’s breathtaking cinematography, which bathes the desert landscape and dingy interiors in vibrant colour, and the casting, which features a career‑defining turn from Harry Dean Stanton and a radiant performance from Nastassja Kinski.