Hard Light Cinema at UR: Focus on German Film

Wings of Desire (128 minutes)

Director: Wim Wenders

Few films can truly feel transcendental, but Wim Wenders’s poetic masterpiece, Wings of Desire has that claim. Angels wander the world looking for love. Will they find it in the dreamy streets of 80s Berlin where history and archaic arthouse culture are around one corner and a rocking Nick Cave concert is around the next? A true immortal epic, and not just because it has Peter Falk playing himself, Wings of Desire is a film that needs to be seen and felt on the big screen. We’re excited to bring this one, a true arthouse classic by one of the great international directors, to the city of Richmond.

So join us at 7 p.m. on October 9 for the beginning of our Hard Light Cinema at UR Focus on German Film series and prepare to yearn amongst friends.

Hard Light Cinema is a new Richmond collective of cinephiles bringing arthouse and non-mainstream films to central Virginia’s young professionals. The collaboration with the Film Studies Program at University of Richmond aims to connect UR students with Richmond city film fans. The aim of Hard Light is to show films typically unavailable in standard movie theaters. On campus, Germany is the setting for all fall 2025 film features.

Upcoming Hard Light at UR Events

Nosferatu the Vampyre (107 min), Werner Herzog
Thursday, Oct. 30, 7–10 p.m.
Jepson 118

This 1979 adaptation of the Weimar era Dracula story blends beauty with destruction as plagues and dreams ravage the silver screen. Klaus Kinski, of Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo fame, scream queen Isabelle Adjani, from Possession and The Tenant, and Werner Herzog, the prolific and effective German master of fiction and documentary, team up for this arthouse horror must-see.

Phoenix, (98 minutes), Christian Petzoid
Thursday, Nov. 13, 7–10 p.m.
Adams Auditorium, Boatwright Memorial Library

Phoenix, Christian Petzold’s exciting Vertigo riff, is the exciting capstone to our Hard Light Cinema at UR German Cinema series. It’s equal parts tender and thrilling as it balances espionage and survival in a post-WWII Berlin. One of Nina Hoss’s great collaborations with Petzold, Phoenix tells the story of a former cabaret singer who survived the concentration camps and returned to find those who betrayed her to the Nazi party. With both scenes that will make you cry and make you sit on the edge of your 118 seat, Phoenix is capped off with one of the 21st century’s great cinematic endings.

So join us for a contemporary masterpiece at 7 p.m. on November 13 and prepare to be amazed with the crowd by this tautly-thrilling film.