Anselm Kiefer

This unique cinematic experience dives deep into an artist’s work and reveals his life path, inspiration, and creative process. It explores his fascination with myth and history. Past and present are interwoven to diffuse the line between film and painting, allowing the audience to be completely immersed in the remarkable world of one of the greatest contemporary artists, Anselm Kiefer. Wim Wenders shot this unique portrait over the course of two years in stunning 3D.

There is no-one quite like Anselm Kiefer. Having achieved fame and notoriety in equal measure in the 1980s, he has become one of the world's most singular and successful artists. Working with themes of history, memory and mythology, Kiefer produces work that is consistently controversial, and monumental in its scale and ambition. In this imagine... Alan Yentob joins the artist at his studios in France and Germany as he prepares for a retrospective at the Royal Academy. In a series of frank interviews set against the backdrop of his awe-inspiring studios, Kiefer discusses the impact of his most significant pieces, installs a selection of new work, and explains why he is as excited and driven by his practice now, at the age of 69, as he was when he began.

The film bears witness to German artist Anselm Kiefer's alchemical creative processes and renders in film, as a cinematic journey, the personal universe he has built at his hill-studio estate in the South of France.

Anselm Kiefer is one of the most important painters of the present, Alexander Kluge's television interviews are legendary. Over several years, the two have met again and kept detailed discussions. With their youthful joy of associating, they talk about Kiefer's career and his way of working, about sources of inspiration and materials, about myths and of course history. Between the thematic blocks, Alexander Kluge switched cinematic miniatures, in which he spun common ideas and deepened individual aspects. A great dialogical artist portrait.