A diary about the pains of filmmaking that are possible to be told. In the late 70s, Wenders arrived in New York to collaborate with Francis Ford Coppola on the film Hammett – what later became one of the most documented chapters in cinema history. The tirades, bitterly coming to terms with the differences between filmmaking in Europe and the USA, ended in a true baptism of fire. During the editing phase of Hammett, Wenders drew inspiration from Jim Jarmusch, new wave music, and paintings by Edward Hopper, creating a visual record of his personal experience and what impersonal cinema is.

“I make very personal movies. Not “private” ones, though”, the director has said. His first film in the USA was a painful experience. At the time, the 33-year-old from Düsseldorf collaborated with the legendary Coppola studio Zoetrope to create a feature film based on the detective novel Hammett by Joe Gores. However, the “incredible luck”, as he thought at the time, resulted in four years of effort, collaborations with four different screenwriters, and 40 script versions, shooting twice and losing control over his work. Coppola was then engrossed in Apocalypse Now (1979), while Wenders found himself in the very depths of hell…