Daily Inspiration Quote by Wim Wenders

Wim Wenders is sneaking a manifesto into a modest-sounding sentence. “Any movie” is a generous umbrella, but the real gatekeeping happens in the next clause: “that has that spirit.” He’s not talking about plot mechanics or box office logic; he’s naming a temperament. The worth of a film, for Wenders, isn’t measured in novelty or polish but in whether it carries an inner refusal to accept the world as fixed.

The key move is the phrasing “says things can be changed.” Not proves, not guarantees. Says. Cinema becomes a form of speech-act: you put the possibility into the air, you give it images, you make it feel plausible. That’s a director’s kind of politics - less policy than perception. Change starts as a shift in what audiences can imagine, and movies are imagination machines with a mass distribution network.

The subtext is defensive and hopeful at once. Defensive because it implicitly rebukes the idea that filmmaking is justified by profit, prestige, or even “important” themes. Hopeful because it insists that optimism isn’t naive if it’s grounded in craft: a film can earn its keep by carrying a current of agency.

Context matters: Wenders emerged from the New German Cinema, working in the long shadow of postwar amnesia and American cultural dominance, then watched Europe cycle through reinvention. His road movies and documentaries obsess over borders, ruins, and people searching for a livable future. The line reads like a north star for artists facing cynicism fatigue: if your film widens the horizon of the possible, it’s not just art - it’s necessary work.