General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Palermo Shooting

Palermo Shooting is a 2008 drama directed by Wim Wenders, written by Wenders with Norman Ohler, and starring the musician Campino as Finn, a successful Düsseldorf photographer who, after a near-fatal car crash, abandons his hectic life and travels to Palermo, where he is pursued by a mysterious figure and falls in love with an art restorer.¹^•² The film competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival.¹

Key fact	Detail
Director and writers	Wim Wenders; screenplay by Wenders and Norman Ohler, with Bernd Lange as co-author¹^•³
Production	Neue Road Movies; produced by Wim Wenders and Gian-Piero Ringel⁴
Principal cast	Campino (Finn), Giovanna Mezzogiorno (Flavia), Dennis Hopper (Frank, a figure of Death), with Milla Jovovich, Patti Smith, and Lou Reed appearing as themselves⁵
Festival	In Competition at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival¹
Running time	124 minutes in the Cannes and Italian listings; the BBFC lists the UK version at about 109 minutes¹^•⁶
German theatrical release	20 November 2008, distributed by Senator Film⁷
European admissions	92,315 admissions in the EU 27 plus Great Britain, of which 49,578 in Germany⁷

Spoilers

Plot

Finn is a photographer of international reputation who lives at high speed: he sleeps little, his mobile phone is never silent, and the music in his headphones is his most constant companion.¹ One night, while driving in Düsseldorf, he narrowly escapes a head-on collision and, as the German film-rating body FBW summarizes, realizes that something in his life must change.⁸

He leaves Germany, ostensibly for a fashion shoot with Milla Jovovich, and travels to Palermo, where he wanders the old city and becomes fascinated by it.⁹ There he is followed by a mysterious pursuer who fires arrows at him; the British Board of Film Classification describes the threat as coming from a "sinister bowman," and the Italian critic Giancarlo Zappoli describes Finn being struck or grazed by arrows shot by a mysterious being.⁶^•¹⁰ He meets Flavia, a young restorer working on a large sixteenth-century fresco depicting the Triumph of Death, and a new life and a great love begin for him, but only after he confronts death itself.¹⁰^•¹ Dennis Hopper plays Frank, identified in the Italian censorship file as "la morte," Death, dressed in white.⁵^•¹⁰

Production

Wenders wrote the film with the author Norman Ohler, with Bernd Lange credited as co-author on some listings.³ Shooting ran from 20 September to 30 October 2007, a total of 30 days, on locations in Düsseldorf and Palermo.¹¹ Sicilian locations included the Palazzo Abatellis, the Quattro Canti, Palazzo Butera, the Vucciria market, and Monte Pellegrino, as well as the town of Gangi.² The film was shot on Super 35 in a 1.66:1 European widescreen ratio.¹¹

Crew and music. Franz Lustig was the director of photography, Sebastian Soukup the production designer, and Peter Przygodda and Oli Weiss the editors; the score was composed by Irmin Schmidt, formerly of the band Can.¹^•⁵ The film was produced by Wenders and Gian-Piero Ringel for Neue Road Movies, with funding of 400,000 euros from Film- und Medienstiftung NRW and 150,000 euros from Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, and in collaboration with ZDF and ARTE.¹¹^•¹²

Casting. The lead was played by Campino, the stage name of Andreas Frege, frontman of the Düsseldorf punk band Die Toten Hosen; according to the German TV listings service Wunschliste, this was his second film role after Langer Samstag and his first in a leading part.¹³ The film is in part a homage to Düsseldorf, Wenders's birth city and a center of fashion photography, and it nods to photographers such as Andreas Gursky and Peter Lindbergh, who appear in the credits under thanks.¹⁴^•¹⁵ Milla Jovovich appears heavily pregnant, playing herself in the fashion-shoot sequences.¹⁶

Wunschliste notes that Palermo Shooting was Wenders's first feature in 15 years to be made in Europe again rather than in the United States.¹³

Release and box office

The film premiered in the Official Competition at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival.¹ It was released in Germany on 20 November 2008 through Senator Film and in Italy on 28 November 2008 through Bim Distribuzione.⁷^•¹⁰ Further releases followed in Austria, Bulgaria, Poland, Portugal, and Turkey in 2009.⁷

Attendance was modest. The Lumiere database of the European Audiovisual Observatory records 92,315 admissions in the EU 27 plus Great Britain, with Germany accounting for 49,578 and Italy 22,155.⁷ MYmovies.it reports an Italian gross of 123,000 euros.¹⁰ The film was later classified for home entertainment and streaming in the United Kingdom in September 2022 by Artificial Eye.⁶

Reception

Cannes critics were largely negative. Jonathan Romney, reviewing for Screen Daily, called the film a "glossy travelogue-thriller with metaphysical pretentions" and "one of the low points of this year's Cannes Competition," criticizing the casting and the writing while describing the film as Wenders musing on love, death, and his recurring theme of the "Crisis of the Image."¹⁶ The Italian site MYmovies.it aggregates a score of 2.21 out of 10 across critics, public, and dictionaries, with the critic Giancarlo Zappoli faulting Wenders for explaining too much and leaving no room for the invisibility the film celebrates.¹⁰ The Italian bishops' film commission rated the film "discutibile, velleitario" (questionable, pretentious).⁵

German assessment was more favorable. The Deutsche Filmbewertung und Medienbewertung (FBW) awarded the film its highest rating, Prädikat besonders wertvoll (especially valuable), with the jury praising Campino's portrayal of a burned-out professional and calling the film a philosophical work with expressive images and large symbolism.⁸ The filmportal.de entry likewise reads the film as a bow to great photographers and a homage to Düsseldorf, and connects its riddling, quotation-laden style to Wenders's earlier "heavenly" films Wings of Desire (1987) and Faraway, So Close! (1993).¹⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 2000s › Biographical and historical drama films 2000s › Released 2006 to 2009

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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