German filmmaker Wim Wenders on Wednesday said he has pulled his 1975 movie “The Wrong Move” over a nude scene featuring a then-13-year-old Nastassja Kinski.
Kinski, now 65, has urged Wenders to reedit the film. Last month, she told the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung: “That was my first film, he was my first director and he didn't protect me.”
Wenders, the acclaimed director behind “Paris, Texas” and “Wings of Desire,” issued a statement apologizing to Kinski.
“I recognize that Nastassja Kinski should have been better protected back then,” Wenders said. “For that, I apologize to you, Nastassja, unreservedly, no ifs and buts.”
“The Wrong Move” marked the film debut of Kinski, the daughter of actor Klaus Kinski. It stars Rüdiger Vogler as an aspiring writer wandering through Germany. His encounters include an apparently mute teen acrobat played by Kinski, who appears topless in a scene.
Wenders said he was “withdrawing it from all current forms of distribution and exhibition,” including streaming services and broadcast television. His nonprofit Wim Wenders Foundation owns “The Wrong Move.”
The film will remain unavailable, Wenders said, until a mutually agreed upon solution can be found. He said he will seek “a broad dialogue” that includes Kinksi, the German Film Academy and other film groups.
“It is necessary for our society to find appropriate ways of dealing with controversial film works from the 20th Century and to face new learning processes and inclusive perspectives regarding cinema,” said Wenders.
Representatives for Kinski did not immediately respond to The Associated Press' request for comment Wednesday.
At the German Film Awards last week, Wenders spoke about his quandary over the film. Speaking to the audience at Germany's equivalent of the Oscars, Wenders said retroactively editing it “sets a precedent that affects you all, and then it becomes possible with all your films later on.”
Kinski would go on to co-star in Wenders' 1984 film “Paris, Texas,” but long maintained misgivings about her introduction to the film business. At the ages of 14 and 17, she also appeared nude in the films “To the Devil a Daughter” and “Stay As You Are.”
“If I had had somebody to protect me or if I had felt more secure about myself, I would not have accepted certain things. Nudity things,” Kinski told W Magazine in 1997. "And inside it was just tearing me apart.”
FILE - German actress Nastassja Kinski appears during a press conference at the Busan International Film Festival in Busan, South Korea, on Oct. 2, 2015. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, File)
FILE - West German actress Nastassja Kinski, left, and West German director Wim Wenders appear during a press conference after the screening of "Paris, Texas" at the Film Festival in Cannes on May 19, 1984. (AP Photo/Michel Lipchitz, File)
FILE - Jury president Wim Wenders speaks at the opening ceremony of the International Film Festival, Berlinale, in Berlin, on Feb. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Hundreds of people have flocked to a tent in Damascus to mourn a former national chess champion who went missing 13 years ago along with her husband and six children, now that their deaths in Syria's civil wa r have finally been confirmed.
Surviving relatives of Rania al-Abbasi announced Sunday that they had seen evidence that she and her family had been killed by pro-government gunmen shortly after they were detained in 2013, and that they would set up a giant tent in the city on Tuesday and Wednesday to receive condolences.
“We had hope. We’ve been looking for them for 13 years in every way possible,” Rana's brother Wael al-Abbasi said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Then we got the horrible news that they were killed the same day they were arrested.”
The case of Rana al-Abbasi, who also was a dentist and who had been accused of funding the opposition, was well-known in Syria, and this week's revelations have received wide coverage in the country's news media. Photos of the family have been all over social media. Many people have said the killers should be sentenced to death.
Mohammad Shukri, Syrian minister of religious affairs, visited the tent in the Rukneddine neighborhood on Tuesday and said the country's new government is making sure that the culprits are held accountable. “They must get their punishment,” he said.
More than 100,000 people went missing in areas once controlled by forces loyal to now-ousted President Bashar Assad and many are believed to have died under torture run by the country’s powerful security agencies. The number could be higher, because many Syrians were too scared to complain under Assad, now in self-exile in Russia. Some people are now coming forward requesting information about missing loved ones.
During the early years of Syria’s conflict, which started with pro-democracy protests and later became a civil war, many people were killed, and the fate of many remains unknown. The conflict left nearly half a million people dead.
The fate of the al-Abassi family was revealed following the arrest of an ex-intelligence officer, who allegedly was involved in the killings, surviving family members said. Amjad Yousef had appeared in a video leaked four years ago that purportedly showed him and his comrades fatally shooting dozens of people during the country’s civil war.
Al-Abbasi’s family was shown another video that was not made public showing the children dead after apparently being strangled or beaten to death.
Wael al-Abbasi said that his brother-in-law, Abdul-Rahman al-Yassin, was detained on March 9, 2013 while his wife and children were detained four days later.
“We were holding on to hope to find one or two of the kids (alive),” he said.
Yousef, the ex-intelligence officer, was arrested by Syria's new authorities in April in the central province in Hama where he had been hiding. He has been undergoing questioning since then.
Wael al-Abbasi said he and other relatives saw a video in which Yousef was talking and pointing the camera at the children in a dark room that may have been part of a detention center.
“He was filming the kids and naming each one of them. Those were our kids, there was no room for doubt that it’s them, they were even wearing the same clothes,” he said.
The children’s ages were from 1 1/2 to 14. They were identified as Ahmad, Dema, Najah, Intisar, Alaa and Layan. He said a couple of them had their faces bloodied.
The brother said he hoped that Yousef and others involved in the killings would go on trial and be hanged. “They’re criminals and we have proof of that through videos. We want the whole chain, all the way up to Bashar Assad. We want them all to hanged.”
Since the fall of Assad, several top officials in his government and security agencies have been detained and some have been put on trial.
Al-Abbasi’s cousin, Doa’a al-Abbasi, said that the family had been worried that the children might have been trafficked, but now they know the truth.
“What is this brutality? What is this hatred? They waited for them to come home from school so he can kill them,” she said, referring to the children. “There are many people like Amjad Yousef and we hope they will all be held accountable."
Residents gather to mourn former chess champion Rania al-Abbasi and her family, who disappeared 13 years ago, after relatives announced Monday they had evidence the family was killed by pro-government gunmen in 2013, in Damascus, Syria, Tuesday, June 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
Residents gather to mourn former chess champion Rania al-Abbasi and her family, who disappeared 13 years ago, after relatives announced Monday they had evidence the family was killed by pro-government gunmen in 2013, in Damascus, Syria, Tuesday, June 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
Doa'a al-Abbasi, cousin of former chess champion Rania al-Abbasi, attends a gathering to mourn al-Abbasi and her family, who disappeared 13 years ago, after relatives announced Monday they had evidence the family was killed by pro-government gunmen in 2013, in Damascus, Syria, Tuesday, June 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
Mohammad Shukri, Syrian minister of religious affairs, speaks during a gathering to mourn former chess champion Rania al-Abbasi and her family, who disappeared 13 years ago, after relatives announced Monday they had evidence the family was killed by pro-government gunmen in 2013, in Damascus, Syria, Tuesday, June 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
Residents gather to mourn former chess champion Rania al-Abbasi and her family, who disappeared 13 years ago, after relatives announced Monday they had evidence the family was killed by pro-government gunmen in 2013, in Damascus, Syria, Tuesday, June 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
