Daily Inspiration Quote by Wim Wenders

Wim Wenders is arguing against a comforting fantasy: that art can be saved by paperwork. When he calls protectionism the "grave of European cinema", he’s not just picking a dramatic metaphor; he’s naming a particular European reflex to treat culture like a fragile heirloom. The line turns the usual logic upside down. Protection, in his framing, doesn’t preserve life; it entombs it. A fence keeps things safe, yes, but it also keeps them static, supervised, and increasingly irrelevant to the world outside.

The subtext is a critique of policy-as-identity. European cinema has long been defended through quotas, subsidies, and cultural exception arguments meant to counter Hollywood’s scale and marketing. Wenders doesn’t deny the imbalance; he questions the psychological cost of responding with insulation. If a film culture defines itself primarily by what it resists, it risks becoming a museum of its own past: funded, respected, and quietly unwatchable.

His wording also hints at the director’s deeper faith in movement and exchange. Wenders came up in a postwar Germany rebuilding its image and imagination, and his films obsess over borders, travel, and the ache of disconnection. So the fence image lands as more than economics; it’s aesthetic. Cinema survives by circulation: co-productions, risky influences, new audiences, cross-pollination. The intent is almost a dare to Europe: compete on vitality, not barricades. The real threat isn’t foreign films. It’s a domesticated industry mistaking shelter for oxygen.