Faraway, So Close!
Short description
Faraway, So Close! continues the story of the angels first seen in Wim Wenders's earlier Berlin film. Cassiel, a guardian angel, has grown weary of watching human lives without being able to take part in them. When he intervenes to save a girl falling from a balcony, he becomes human, and the world turns from monochrome into colour. His new life brings no happiness: he falls in with a criminal and only later understands the nature of the business he has joined. His fellow angel Raphaela, along with the angel-turned-human Damiel, try to reach him as he sets out to change things around him. The film is set in Berlin after the fall of the Wall, and Otto Sander plays Cassiel, with Bruno Ganz returning as Damiel, Nastassja Kinski as Raphaela, Peter Falk as himself, Solveig Dommartin as Marion and Heinz Rühmann as Konrad.
Wenders directed the film, the eighth of the twenty-two features credited to him in chronological order, between Until the End of the World and Lisbon Story. He wrote the screenplay with Richard Reitinger and Ulrich Zieger and produced it with Ulrich Felsberg. Around sixty cast members and eighty-two crew were credited, and the production had a budget of about eleven million dollars.
On IMDb the film holds a rating of 7.2 from roughly 9,800 votes, and on TMDB it has a rating of 7 from 184 votes. A critics' rating of 5.8 from twelve reviews is lower than both audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- The President of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, appears in the film, playing himself.
- Nastassja Kinski had previously worked with Wenders twice – in “Wrong Move” (1975) and “Paris, Texas” (1984).
- Yella Rottländer appeared in one of the episodes. Before this, she hadn't been in a film since the 1970s (as a child), including playing the lead role in Wenders’ early film “Alice in the Cities” (1974). At that time, her co-star was Rüdiger Vogler as Philipp Winter. In “Faraway, So Close!”, she plays the angel of a character also named Philipp Winter, again played by Rüdiger Vogler.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
