Wim Wenders · 1991 · global

Wim Wenders's 1991 road movie, shot in fifteen cities across four continents in the last weeks of 1999, with an Indian nuclear satellite coming down somewhere. Claire chases a man she has just met around the world; a novelist chases her; a detective chases both. The director's cut runs nearly five hours, and the last two of them never leave the Australian desert.

1. 1
   Venice

   Claire Tourneur leaves a party in a Venice that is already half under water, carrying a bag of stolen money for two bank robbers - and drives out with no particular plan except away.

2. 2
   Paris

   On the road she picks up a hitchhiker calling himself Trevor McPhee, who is being tracked by facial recognition and satellite - and who steals part of her money in Paris and vanishes, which is where the chase begins.

3. 3
   Berlin

   She hires the detective Philip Winter, who finds people with a laptop and a database - the technology in this film being the thing critics laughed at in 1991 and stopped laughing at around 2013.

4. 4
   Lisbon

   West to the Atlantic edge, and by now the pursuit has acquired a novelist: Claire's ex Eugene, following her and writing it down, whose narration turns out to be the film we have been watching.

5. 5
   Moscow

   East again, and the film settles into its rhythm of airports, hotel rooms and rented cars - four people crossing continents after each other and never quite arriving at the same time.

6. 6
   Beijing

   Shot on a handheld digital camera because Wenders could not get permits - which is why the Chinese sequences look different from everything around them, and now look like the future the film was predicting.

7. 7
   Hakone

   A Japanese inn where an elderly couple, played by two of Ozu's actors from Tokyo Story, treat Sam's failing eyes with herbs - the quietest scene in the film, and the one where Claire stops chasing and starts staying.

8. 8
   San Francisco

   One more recording session, and Chico arriving with money to keep them going - the last stop before the film abandons the northern hemisphere entirely and does not come back.

9. 9
   Coober Pedy

   An opal town in the South Australian desert where people live underground, and Farber's laboratory in a cave nearby - where the second half of the film takes place, and nobody goes anywhere at all.