Faraway, So Close!

Lore & Background

The story follows the angel Cassiel, who unlike his friend Damiel, chose not to become human despite being told of the joys of life. Cassiel only becomes human in the reunified Berlin, but quickly becomes involved in a criminal enterprise that threatens his newfound life and his friends. The film features a cameo appearance by singer Lou Reed playing himself, while Peter Falk reprises his role from *Wings of Desire* as a main cast member, and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev appears in a speaking role. Heinz Rühmann appears in his last film role.

Reader's Guide

Faraway, So Close! is significant as Wim Wenders' sequel to his acclaimed Wings of Desire, exploring Berlin after the fall of the Wall. The film continues themes of angelic observation and human experience, with a darker turn as Cassiel descends into crime. Academics have noted its increased religious themes, including the first reference to God in the series, and a quote from Matthew 6:22-23. While less commercially successful than the original, it won the Grand Prix du Jury at Cannes and represents a meditation on post-reunification Berlin and the nature of time and humanity.

Did You Know?

• Heinz Rühmann's role was his last film appearance before his death in October 1994.
• The soundtrack includes U2 songs 'Stay (Faraway, So Close!)' and 'The Wanderer'.

Cassiel's Descent into Humanity

The narrative centers on Cassiel, an angel who, unlike his companion Damiel, has resisted the pull toward mortal life. While Damiel now runs a pizza shop called Casa dell'angelo in reunited Berlin, married to a trapeze artist named Marion with a young daughter, Cassiel remains in the celestial realm, observing the city and its inhabitants. His trajectory shifts when he shadows Raissa Becker, an eleven-year-old girl in former East Berlin, and witnesses her mother being tailed by a detective working for Anton Baker, an American arms dealer and pornographer. When Raissa teeters over a balcony railing, Cassiel leaps to save her and is suddenly transformed into a human. Stripped of everything except a tangible suit of angelic armor, he must learn to control his voice, navigate traffic, and survive without identity papers. His vulnerability is exploited by Emit Flesti, a figure who calls himself Time, who tricks him into gambling away his armor and later into alcohol addiction. Forced to forge a new identity as Karl Engel, Cassiel is drawn into Baker's criminal world before ultimately turning against it, sacrificing his human life to free Raissa and his friends—only to be restored to angelhood.

Faith, Form, and the Question of Modernity

Critics and scholars have identified a distinctly more spiritual register in this sequel compared to its predecessor. The film introduces what is described as the first explicit reference to God across both movies, with the angels articulating a purpose of connecting human beings to a divine presence. Biblical quotations from the Gospel of Matthew appear in the dialogue, a detail one writer attributed to Wenders personally returning to Christianity during the six-year gap between the two films. Beyond theology, the sequel's structure has drawn varied academic responses. One professor argued that the absence of the Berlin Wall's division—present as a powerful metaphor in the original—renders the follow-up somewhat diminished in force. Another scholar countered that the film's deliberately loose, formless architecture is actually a fitting expression of the cultural disorientation that followed the Revolutions of 1989. A third academic placed the work in a broader Wenders tradition, reading it as an affirmation of storytelling's capacity to anchor both personal and collective identity in times of upheaval.

Reunited Berlin and a Returning Cast

Wenders conceived the project less as a conventional sequel and more as an opportunity to capture Berlin in the aftermath of the Wall's collapse. Although the 1987 original closes with the words "To be continued," the director had initially planned a separate film about the transformed city in 1991 that would not involve the angel characters at all. The decision to bring back the cast was also shaped by Otto Sander, who actively wanted his character to undergo the transformation into humanity and contributed plot ideas to the screenplay, which Wenders co-wrote with Richard Reitinger and Ulrich Zieger. The returning ensemble includes Sander, Solveig Dommartin, Bruno Ganz, and Peter Falk, all reprising their roles from the first film. New faces join them: Nastassja Kinski and Willem Dafoe bring fresh energy to the story, while veteran German actor Heinz Rühmann delivers what would be his final performance on screen. The result is a film that threads together the familiar celestial world with the gritty, newly unified streetscape of a city still finding its footing.

Awards, Audience, and Afterlife

At the 1993 Cannes Film Festival, Faraway, So Close! claimed the Grand Prix du Jury, a significant international recognition that underscored its artistic ambition. Despite this honor, the film found a smaller audience and received a more muted critical reception than the predecessor it followed. Its cultural afterlife, however, extended well beyond the initial release. In 1998, a U.S. remake titled City of Angels reimagined the angelic premise for a new audience, a project one writer connected to the "mythic phenomena" threaded through the original. The film also became a subject of sustained academic discussion, with professors examining its relationship to the political moment of post-reunification Germany, its theological underpinnings, and its place within Wenders' broader body of work alongside films like Paris, Texas. For fans of the original, the sequel offers both a satisfying continuation of Damiel's domestic life and a bittersweet meditation on what it means to choose mortality over eternity in a world that has just lost one of its most defining barriers.

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