Film

Pina

Wim Wenders' elegy for choreographer Pina Bausch, staged in immersive 3D across Wuppertal's theatres, streets and industrial edges. Her dancers perform signature pieces from her repertoire while speaking, in hushed voiceover, about what she meant to them. It's less biography than felt memorial - grief translated into movement, longing rendered as physical excess. For anyone curious about dance on film, or mourning an artist through their work.

TMDb rating7.4

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La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet2009

Wiseman's patient camera lingers in rehearsal rooms and wings, showing the sweat and repetition behind the transcendence, a perfect companion for anyone wanting dance without narration or sentiment.

But Three hours long with no explanatory voiceover or music cues to guide you - it demands patience rather than delivering easy awe.

La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet poster

Cunningham2019no page yet

Another dance legend gets the archival-plus-restaged treatment, mixing rare footage with new 3D performances that feel eerily alive, tracing a whole avant-garde alongside one artist's evolution.

But The biographical sections feel dutiful next to the electric performance footage, and it's less purely sensory than Pina.

Buena Vista Social Club1999

Wenders again, this time turning his camera on aging Cuban musicians rediscovering fame, with the same tenderness toward artists nearing the end of their working lives.

But Warmer and more conventional - a crowd-pleaser rather than an experiment in cinematic form.

Buena Vista Social Club poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Red Shoes1948

Both insist dance can consume the person performing it - The Red Shoes dramatizes as tragedy what Pina shows as lived, ongoing devotion.

A Technicolor ballet melodrama, decades before 3D, that treats dance as ecstatic and dangerous, pushing the body toward transcendence and ruin in equal measure.

But Melodrama and old-fashioned romantic framing will feel far more theatrical and plotted than Bausch's abstract physical theatre.

The Red Shoes poster
More like this (8)

First Position2011no page yet

Follows young ballet dancers preparing for a major competition, giving real human stakes and ambition to classical technique, with genuine suspense built into every audition.

But Much more conventional documentary storytelling, heavy on talking heads and competition drama instead of pure movement.

Dancer2016no page yet

A blistering portrait of ballet star Sergei Polunin, equal parts genius and self-destruction, capturing the toll total physical commitment to art can take on a body and a life.

But Heavier on ego and personal drama than communal artistry - a different, more combustible temperature than Bausch's ensemble spirit.

Ballets Russes2005no page yet

Traces an extraordinary ballet lineage through the 20th century, interviewing elderly dancers who remember the birth of modern ballet with startling clarity and humour.

But Talkier and more historical, better suited to those interested in dance history than in pure choreography.

The Salt of the Earth2014no page yet

Another Wenders collaboration, this time with photographer Sebastião Salgado, sharing the same reverence for an artist's eye and the human cost embedded in their work.

But Photography, not movement - the stillness is the opposite sensory experience from watching bodies in motion.

Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present2012no page yet

Documents a performance artist testing endurance and presence before an audience, echoing Bausch's interest in the body as the site of raw emotional truth.

But Slower and more conceptual, rooted in gallery performance art rather than trained dance technique.

Amy2015

Assembles home footage and performance clips into a devastating portrait of a singular talent - proof that documentary tribute can be as moving as any staged elegy.

But Music, not dance, and considerably sadder and more tabloid-adjacent in its subject matter.

Amy poster

Suspiria1977

Both use choreographed bodies in enclosed European dance spaces to bypass language entirely, letting movement and colour carry meaning instead of dialogue.

Argento's horror classic is set in a German dance academy and uses colour, sound and moving bodies as pure sensory assault, turning technique itself into terror.

But It's a body-count horror film - a wildly different register from Bausch's meditative, grief-soaked physical theatre.

Suspiria poster

Wings of Desire1987

Same director, same fascination with what it means to inhabit a body and a city - Pina turns that question toward one choreographer's real legacy.

Wenders' own fiction masterpiece - angels drifting through Berlin, aching to inhabit the physical world, tenderly obsessed with presence, mortality and embodiment.

But A fictional narrative in black-and-white poetry rather than a documentary tribute to a specific artist's life and work.

Wings of Desire poster

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