A2 · Elementary
9 min
film historyculturechild protectioneuropean cinema
Fifty Years Before Anyone Listened
Trece años en la pantalla
In 1975, German director Wim Wenders filmed a nude scene featuring actress Nastassja Kinski when she was just thirteen years old. Now, fifty years later, Kinski has spoken out and Wenders has pulled the film from distribution.
En 1975, el director alemán Wim Wenders filmó una escena con la actriz Nastassja Kinski cuando ella tenía solo trece años. Ahora, cincuenta años después, Kinski habla por primera vez y Wenders retira la película del cine.
6 essential A2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| retirar | to withdraw, to pull back (formally) | Wenders retira la película de todos los cines. |
| quitar | to remove, to take away (neutral) | Quito los platos de la mesa después de comer. |
| proteger | to protect | Los adultos protegen a los niños. |
| famoso | famous | Wim Wenders es un director muy famoso en Europa. |
| escena | scene (in a film or play) | La escena del film es un problema grande. |
| poder | power; to be able to | Los directores tienen mucho poder en el cine. |
There's a film from 1975 that most people outside Germany have probably never heard of, and as of this week, Wim Wenders doesn't want anyone to see it.
Sí.
Yes.
La película se llama 'Falso movimiento'.
The film is called 'The Wrong Move'.
Wenders la retira ahora.
Wenders is withdrawing it now.
Right.
And the reason he's pulling it, fifty years after it was made, is that the actress Nastassja Kinski has come forward and said there's a scene in the film, a nude scene, that was shot when she was thirteen years old, and she wants it gone.
Kinski tenía trece años.
Kinski was thirteen years old.
Es una niña.
She is a child.
No es una adulta.
She is not an adult.
Exactly.
And Wenders, to his credit, responded quickly and said yes, pull it, re-edit it.
Which raises a whole set of questions I want to get into with you, because this story is about a lot more than one film.
Claro.
Of course.
Esto no es solo una película.
This is not just one film.
Es una pregunta grande.
It is a big question.
So for people who don't know Wim Wenders, walk me through who he is, because the name carries real weight in European cinema.
Wenders es un director alemán muy famoso.
Wenders is a very famous German director.
Hace películas desde los años setenta.
He has been making films since the seventies.
He's one of the founding figures of what people call New German Cinema, a movement that came out of the late sixties and seventies, filmmakers like Wenders, Fassbinder, Herzog, who were basically reinventing what German film could be after the cultural catastrophe of the Nazi period.
Sí.
Yes.
Wenders hace películas muy importantes.
Wenders makes very important films.
'París, Texas' es muy famosa.
'Paris, Texas' is very famous.
And 'Wings of Desire.' He's not a fringe figure.
He's as canonical as it gets.
That's part of what makes this uncomfortable, because the instinct from some corners is going to be: you can't touch a masterwork.
Pero Kinski es una persona real.
But Kinski is a real person.
No es solo un personaje.
She is not just a character.
That's the core of it, isn't it.
The art exists, but so does the person who was harmed in the making of it.
Those two things don't go away just because fifty years passed.
Exacto.
Exactly.
El tiempo no cambia lo que pasa.
Time does not change what happened.
Una niña es una niña.
A girl is a girl.
Now, Nastassja Kinski in 1975 was not a nobody.
Her father was Klaus Kinski, who was one of the most volatile and brilliant actors in European cinema, worked constantly with Herzog.
She grew up inside this world.
Sí.
Yes.
El padre de Kinski es muy famoso.
Kinski's father is very famous.
Ella conoce el mundo del cine.
She knows the world of cinema.
Which probably made it harder, not easier, for anyone around her to say this is wrong.
When a thirteen-year-old is the daughter of a celebrated actor and already embedded in that industry, who's going to be the one to pump the brakes?
Nadie para.
Nobody stops.
Todo el mundo trabaja.
Everyone works.
Es normal en esa época.
It is normal in that era.
And that's the thing, isn't it.
In the seventies there was this idea, in certain artistic circles especially, that bourgeois morality was the enemy.
Rules about children in film, about what was acceptable, were seen as conservative obstacles to authentic expression.
Some of that thinking was genuine idealism.
Some of it was self-serving cover for exploitation.
Los directores tienen mucho poder.
Directors have a lot of power.
Los actores no dicen no.
Actors do not say no.
Especially child actors.
And it's worth saying that Nastassja Kinski's story didn't stop there.
She went on to work with Roman Polanski when she was, again, a teenager.
Polanski, who was convicted of statutory rape of a thirteen-year-old in 1977, just one year after this Wenders film.
Sí.
Yes.
Polanski es un problema muy grande también.
Polanski is a very big problem too.
Kinski trabaja con él después.
Kinski works with him afterwards.
There's a pattern there that is genuinely disturbing if you sit with it.
This was an industry that had, in effect, built structures that made young women, and especially girls, vulnerable.
And the artistic prestige of it all was the mechanism that kept people quiet.
El arte no protege a las personas.
Art does not protect people.
El arte no es una excusa.
Art is not an excuse.
Now, Wenders has made a specific decision here.
He's not just saying 'I apologize and we'll look into it.' He has actually withdrawn the film from distribution and called for the scene to be re-edited out.
That's a significant step.
What do you make of it?
Wenders escucha a Kinski.
Wenders listens to Kinski.
Eso es importante.
That is important.
Muchos no hacen eso.
Many do not do that.
That's true.
The history of powerful men in this industry being confronted with similar things is mostly a history of denial, legal threats, or 'that was a different time.' The fact that Wenders moved fast and said yes without hedging, that matters.
Él dice: sí, la escena es un problema.
He says: yes, the scene is a problem.
Retiro la película.
I withdraw the film.
But here's where it gets complicated, and I want to push on this a little.
When you remove a film from distribution, in the physical-media age that actually meant something.
In 2026, with the internet as it is, how much does that gesture actually accomplish?
En internet, todo existe.
On the internet, everything exists.
Las películas viejas están en muchos lugares.
Old films are in many places.
Right, it's not like you can un-ring the bell.
The film is out there.
Pulling it from official channels is a moral statement more than a practical one.
But moral statements are not nothing, especially when they come with a concrete ask: re-edit the scene.
Sí.
Yes.
La escena no existe en la versión nueva.
The scene does not exist in the new version.
Eso es real.
That is real.
Which raises a debate that film scholars and archivists have been fighting over for decades.
Do you alter an artwork to account for the ethics of its production?
There's a camp that says no, absolutely not, the historical record is sacred, you document everything including the ugliness.
And there's another camp that says if the work itself contains evidence of harm done to a real person, the victim's wishes take precedence.
Para mí, Kinski es más importante que la película.
For me, Kinski is more important than the film.
Es una persona.
She is a person.
I don't disagree.
And what I keep coming back to is that the argument about preserving the original is almost always made by people who were not the ones in front of the camera at thirteen.
It's a lot easier to argue for the integrity of the archive when you're not in it.
Sí.
Yes.
El archivo no sufre.
The archive does not suffer.
Kinski sí sufre.
Kinski does suffer.
Now, Nastassja Kinski went on to have a real career.
'Cat People,' 'Tess,' she worked with some of the most important directors of the late twentieth century.
But her early years are a story of a girl who was, repeatedly, in situations where the adults around her were not protecting her.
Ella trabaja mucho.
She works a lot.
Pero nadie la protege cuando es joven.
But nobody protects her when she is young.
And what strikes me about her speaking out now, all these years later, is that she's not asking for punishment.
She's not calling for Wenders to be cancelled, to use the current vocabulary.
She's asking for one thing: remove this specific scene, or don't show the film.
That's a pretty narrow, concrete demand from someone who would be entitled to much more anger.
Kinski no quiere destruir a Wenders.
Kinski does not want to destroy Wenders.
Solo quiere proteger su imagen.
She only wants to protect her image.
Which is worth noting in an era when these conversations often get very loud very fast.
This one is relatively quiet, and maybe that's why Wenders was able to respond the way he did.
There's something instructive in that, actually, about how change happens, about what makes it possible for someone to do the right thing.
Sí.
Yes.
No hay guerra aquí.
There is no war here.
Hay una conversación.
There is a conversation.
Eso es diferente.
That is different.
I want to zoom out for a second, because Wenders is eighty now, and the culture he came up in was genuinely different from ours, not in ways that excuse what happened, but in ways that explain it.
The question of what we do with the art produced by that era, not just this film, is one that's going to be with us for a long time.
Hay muchas películas con problemas.
There are many films with problems.
No solo esta.
Not only this one.
Es un tema grande.
It is a big topic.
Enormous.
And I don't think there's a clean answer.
But I do think Nastassja Kinski speaking at this point in her life, and Wenders actually listening, is something.
It's small, but it's something.
Octavio, I want to ask you something that just occurred to me, actually.
You used the word 'retirar' earlier.
That's 'withdraw,' right, to pull something back.
Sí.
Yes.
'Retirar' es quitar algo de un lugar.
'Retirar' is to take something away from a place.
Wenders retira la película.
Wenders withdraws the film.
So it's not just 'quitar,' which I think of as simply removing something.
'Retirar' has more of a formal weight to it, like a deliberate act.
Exacto.
Exactly.
'Quitar' es simple.
'Quitar' is simple.
'Retirar' es más formal y serio.
'Retirar' is more formal and serious.
Un político retira sus palabras.
A politician withdraws his words.
Un director retira su película.
A director withdraws his film.
That's actually a useful distinction for learners, because 'retirar' carries intention, almost like a public declaration, whereas 'quitar' is more neutral, more physical.
You quitar the dishes from the table.
You retirar a film from circulation.
Sí.
Yes.
'Quito mi chaqueta.' 'Retiro mis palabras.' Son muy diferentes.
'I take off my jacket.' 'I withdraw my words.' They are very different.
I might steal that.
'Retiro mis palabras.' That's going to come in handy the next time I say something wrong at a family dinner in Madrid.
Fletcher, tú siempre dices algo incorrecto.
Fletcher, you always say something wrong.
'Retirar' no es suficiente para ti.
'Retirar' is not enough for you.