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A visually inventive dance tribute that uses 3D and location shooting to turn choreography into cinematic space. It’s less a conventional documentary than an immersive elegy, and it works best as a sensory experience and a celebration of movement.
Where to watch: Buy
Thu · 1h 46m
Director: Wim Wenders
Starring: Regina Advento, Malou Airaudo, Ruth Amarante
Pina is a feature-length dance film in 3D with the ensemble of the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, featuring the unique and inspiring art of the great German choreographer, who died in the summer of 2009.
Wim Wenders
Regina Advento, Malou Airaudo, Ruth Amarante
A visually inventive dance tribute that uses 3D and location shooting to turn choreography into cinematic space. It’s less a conventional documentary than an immersive elegy, and it works best as a sensory experience and a celebration of movement.
Pina is a rare documentary that understands its subject by refusing to explain her too much. Instead of building a conventional life story, Wim Wenders lets the dancers carry Pina Bausch’s legacy through performance, gesture, and memory. The result feels less like an obituary than a living continuation of her work.
The 3D is not a gimmick here; it gives the choreography volume, distance, and texture, making bodies feel sculptural and immediate. Some viewers may miss a more detailed portrait of Bausch herself, but the film’s restraint is part of its power. It trusts movement, faces, and space to communicate what words would flatten.
As a piece of cinema, it is elegant, mournful, and unusually attentive to the physical intelligence of dance. Even if contemporary dance is not usually your thing, the film’s formal ambition and emotional clarity make it easy to admire. For those already receptive to performance art, it can be deeply moving.
dylan gelula (5★) · 305 likes
i watched this with my mom while visiting her this week. here is her first letterboxd review: "I thought Pina was a moving tribute to Pina Bausch. It's not a biopic and there's no attempt to interpret her choreography or critique her choices. Rather, the film lets the dancers in her company express their reverence for her by performing her dances and adding a few moments of focus on their facial expressions with a sentence or two about her guidance.… more
Ole Holgersen (2.5★) · 187 likes
I have mixed feelings about this film. There's some powerful cinematography in the film that complements the intriguing and some times wildly experimental choreography by the legendary Pina Bausch. But I feel that Wim Wenders' indecisiveness on whether to make this a pure documentation of Bausch's dances, or to makes it a retrospective of her work, ultimately failed the picture. The lack of information given by both the style of dance and Pina herself did the film a huge disservice,… more
Edgar Cochran ✝️🍋 (4★) · 116 likes
The artistically portrayed legacy of a radical expressionist that tied the emotions with the soul, and the soul with the vastly underappreciated, ethereal art of dancing. The documentary functions as a collage of Pina's ideas. What is the cinematic merit, then? The entire product is a fusion of the audiovisual capabilities of cinema with the "theatricality" of dancing, an event that one normally would only appreciate statically from a seat. Compelling and more thought-provoking than one would expect, this portrayal
Chris C (4.5★) · 94 likes
What is our body but the instrument of our soul ‘Dance, dance, otherwise we’re lost’ —Pina
Dan🇵🇸 (4.5★) · 71 likes
Can't believe that this is one of wim wenders best work, and it's not even a real movie. As the one & only wim wenders feature length dance film, and as a dance & musical fan myself, i truly love this. An hour and 40 minutes of relentlessly captivating, stunning & unique dance, serves as a fitting homage to the legendary dancer & choreographer, Pina Bausch. There's a lot of cool & unusual moments of dance in it. And the performers truly deliver such captivating
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dance, documentary, 3D cinematography, performance art, contemporary choreography, elegiac, experimental, art-house, body movement, tribute