MOVIE · 1980

Lightning Over Water

Documentary91 min

Terminally ill and determined to keep working, director Nicholas Ray invites Wim Wenders to New York to help him make one last film. Wenders, between Hollywood projects, turns his camera on Ray as the two talk through an unrealized story about a dying painter who plans to sail to China for a cure. What emerges is both a collaboration and a record of Ray’s final months, with the men onscreen as themselves and the filmmaking process left visible. Best known for Rebel Without a Cause, Ray becomes the center of a film that keeps shifting between staged scenes, candid conversation, and raw video images.