Lisbon Story

Philip Winter, a sound engineer, goes to Lisbon after a postcard from his friend the filmmaker Friedrich Munro. When he arrives Friedrich is nowhere to be found. Winter looks for him, then starts recording sound for the unfinished film and wanders the city. Friedrich's obsession emerges later: unedited footage shot without aiming the camera and shown to nobody, what he calls the unseen image. Wim Wenders directed. The film began as part of Lisbon's year as European City of Culture in 1994 and turned from documentary into fiction. It talks to Wenders's own films. It counts as a sequel to The State of Things from 1982, with Patrick Bauchau returning as Friedrich Munro. Rudiger Vogler as Philip Winter is a salute to Wenders's road trilogy of 1974 to 1976. The Portuguese group Madredeus and the director Manoel de Oliveira appear in semi-fictional roles. It screened in Un Certain Regard at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival and was the fourth most popular domestic film in Portugal that year with 16,000 admissions. Who it is for: viewers who like cinema about cinema, Lisbon and Madredeus. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for events. It is almost entirely wandering and talk, and narrative is not the subject.