51 years after the film’s release, the renowned German auteur Wim Wenders has announced that he is pulling his 1975 film, The Wrong Move, from circulation because it features a 13-year-old actress, Nastassja Kinski, topless. While it took Wenders five decades to admit wrongdoing, Kinski had reportedly been calling to shelve the film for the last 15. “Even though I didn’t know much at 13, I could already tell that wasn’t right,” she told the German publication, Süddeutsche Zeitung, last year. If only Wenders, who was 29 at the time of filming, also had some reservations about exploiting a child.
According to The New York Times, Wenders first raised the subject of editing the film at the German Film Awards, where he received a lifetime achievement award, last week. At the time, he struggled with whether or not to re-cut a 50-year-old movie. Today, however, Wenders announced that his non-profit Wim Wenders Foundation, which owns the film, “is withdrawing it from all current forms of distribution and exhibition. Streaming services, television broadcasters and distribution partners will be instructed to cease public access to the film.”
“As the only person responsible at the time for Wrong Move who is still here, I recognize that Nastassja Kinski should have been better protected back then. For that, I apologize to you, Nastassja, unreservedly, no ifs and buts,” he wrote. “It is necessary for our society to find appropriate ways of dealing with controversial film works from the 20th Century and to face new learning processes and inclusive perspectives regarding cinema. As part of this important debate, we will seek a broad dialogue – with the German Film Academy, the DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, other film heritage institutions and intergenerational groups.”
“Only after that process has taken place —even if it takes considerable time—and once we have been able to present a mutually agreed solution, which will include Nastassja Kinski, will we make the film available again.”
In 2016, Criterion released a DVD of The Wrong Move as part of a box set collecting Wenders’ “road trilogy,” sitting between Alice In The Cities and King Of The Road. Starring Rüdiger Vogler, the series was described as “a crash course in New German Cinema” by The A.V. Club in 2016. In Wrong Move, Kinski plays Mignon, a mute acrobat whom Volger obsessed over after catching a glimpse of her on a train with her middle-aged ex-Nazi companion.
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