Acclaimed German director Wim Wenders announced he was withdrawing his 1975 film, “Wrong Move,” from distribution due to a scene featuring then-13-year-old actor Nastassja Kinski topless.
Kinski played Mignon, a mute acrobat and street performer, in the film. In the controversial scene, she is featured lying on the bed topless as she tries to seduce her 30-something co-star Rüdiger Vogler, who plays Wilhelm.
Wilhelm enters the room, removes most of his clothing and gets into bed with her, slaps her, pushes her away and then caresses her face and cradles her.
Kinski, who also starred in Roman Polanski’s “Tess” and Wenders’ “Paris, Texas,” has voiced her discomfort with the scene for decades and recently told a German news outlet that, although she “didn’t know much at the age of 13,” she could tell that it wasn’t right.
In a 1997 USA TV interview, she was candid about wishing some of her work could be scrubbed from the screen permanently, saying, “I’ve done quite a lot of movies, a lot of movies that I want to just go and burn someplace. You always calculate ‘how much would that cost? How would I do that?’ and just know it’ll exist forever. It won’t be showing all that much, but just the fact that it’s there and it’ll exist.”
She told W Magazine the same year, “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 said. “And inside it was just tearing me apart.”
Per the Hollywood Reporter, Wenders received a lifetime achievement award at the German Film Awards last week and addressed the “Wrong Move” issue in his speech, saying that he would not shoot the scene today. He also said that he knew that keeping it in the film had continued to cause Kinski pain.
“I can’t blame the 29-year-old young man I was then, 50 years ago, who made a film of his time; wanting, in a way, to capture the zeitgeist,” he added before calling on the members of the German Film Academy to debate the issue and aid him in finding a resolution.
On Wednesday, the “Perfect Days” director issued a statement that was posted on social media saying that he would withdraw the film from all current forms of distribution.
“As the only person responsible at the time for Wrong Move who is still here, I recognize that Nastassja Kinski should have been better protected back then. For that, I apologize to you, Nastassja, unreservedly, no ifs and buts.”
Wender said that “the many reactions, comments, and conversations of recent days” had a played role in shifting his perception of the issue but that society must find appropriate ways of dealing with controversial film works from the 20th century.
“Only after that process has taken place — even if it takes considerable time — and once we have been able to present a mutually agreed solution, which will include Nastassja Kinski, will we make the film available again.”
Kinski commented on Wenders’ statement on Wednesday. The following has been translated from German:
“Wim, after all that, all those years, only because the public has now commented in so many newspapers, as well as colleagues, and now because thousands — even though I asked for so long — only now because of the public, do I read THESE words from you, W. Wenders: ‘Nastassja, back then 13 in the first film, Wrong Move.’ ”
Wim Wenders pulls film featuring topless 13-year-old Nastassja Kinski
Acclaimed German director Wim Wenders announced he was withdrawing his 1975 film, “Wrong Move,” from distribution due to a scene featuring then-13-year-old actor Nastassja Kinski topless.
Kinski played Mignon, a mute acrobat and street performer, in the film. In the controversial scene, she is featured lying on the bed topless as she tries to seduce her 30-something co-star Rüdiger Vogler, who plays Wilhelm.
Wilhelm enters the room, removes most of his clothing and gets into bed with her, slaps her, pushes her away and then caresses her face and cradles her.
Kinski, who also starred in Roman Polanski’s “Tess” and Wenders’ “Paris, Texas,” has voiced her discomfort with the scene for decades and recently told a German news outlet that, although she “didn’t know much at the age of 13,” she could tell that it wasn’t right.
In a 1997 USA TV interview, she was candid about wishing some of her work could be scrubbed from the screen permanently, saying, “I’ve done quite a lot of movies, a lot of movies that I want to just go and burn someplace. You always calculate ‘how much would that cost? How would I do that?’ and just know it’ll exist forever. It won’t be showing all that much, but just the fact that it’s there and it’ll exist.”
She told W Magazine the same year, “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 said. “And inside it was just tearing me apart.”
Per the Hollywood Reporter, Wenders received a lifetime achievement award at the German Film Awards last week and addressed the “Wrong Move” issue in his speech, saying that he would not shoot the scene today. He also said that he knew that keeping it in the film had continued to cause Kinski pain.
“I can’t blame the 29-year-old young man I was then, 50 years ago, who made a film of his time; wanting, in a way, to capture the zeitgeist,” he added before calling on the members of the German Film Academy to debate the issue and aid him in finding a resolution.
On Wednesday, the “Perfect Days” director issued a statement that was posted on social media saying that he would withdraw the film from all current forms of distribution.
“As the only person responsible at the time for Wrong Move who is still here, I recognize that Nastassja Kinski should have been better protected back then. For that, I apologize to you, Nastassja, unreservedly, no ifs and buts.”
Wender said that “the many reactions, comments, and conversations of recent days” had a played role in shifting his perception of the issue but that society must find appropriate ways of dealing with controversial film works from the 20th century.
“Only after that process has taken place — even if it takes considerable time — and once we have been able to present a mutually agreed solution, which will include Nastassja Kinski, will we make the film available again.”
Kinski commented on Wenders’ statement on Wednesday. The following has been translated from German:
“Wim, after all that, all those years, only because the public has now commented in so many newspapers, as well as colleagues, and now because thousands — even though I asked for so long — only now because of the public, do I read THESE words from you, W. Wenders: ‘Nastassja, back then 13 in the first film, Wrong Move.’ ”
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CNN sues Perplexity, alleging unlawful distribution of copyrighted content | Media News
Perplexity unlawfully copied thousands of CNN stories, videos and images to power its products, CNN said in its lawsuit.
Published On 28 May 202628 May 2026
United States news channel CNN has filed a lawsuit against Perplexity in New York federal court, alleging the AI search engine provider is unlawfully distributing its copyrighted content, marking the latest legal tussle between the AI firm and a news publisher.
The complaint, filed on Thursday, said that Perplexity unlawfully copied thousands of CNN stories, videos and images to power its products and distribute “identical or substantially similar” competing content.
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“You can’t copyright facts,” Perplexity spokesperson Jesse Dwyer said in response to the lawsuit.
CNN is asking for an unspecified amount of monetary damages and a court order blocking Perplexity from violating its intellectual property rights.
“CNN’s lawsuit stands for the proposition that Perplexity, a company valued at tens of billions of dollars, should not be able to steal from entities that create the original content Perplexity exploits,” the Warner Bros-owned news company said in a statement.
“By exploiting CNN’s reporting in this manner, Perplexity violates the protections afforded by copyright law and undermines the economic incentives that make original newsgathering possible,” CNN said in the complaint.
Since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, news publishers and writers have worried about their content being repurposed to appear in the results of a chatbot query, triggering battles over copyright, compensation and ownership.
CNN’s lawsuit is one of dozens of high-stakes US cases brought by copyright owners, including news outlets, authors and publishers, against tech companies over alleged misuse of their work to train large language models. Anthropic was the first AI company to settle one of these cases last year, agreeing to pay $1.5bn to resolve a class action lawsuit from a group of authors.
The CNN suit is the latest in a series of legal challenges brought against Perplexity, which uses AI to scour websites and answer users’ queries, alleging the company has infringed copyrights and unlawfully scraped data to train its technology.
Perplexity is also facing lawsuits from The New York Times, Reddit and Dow Jones, among others.
Several news firms have now signed licensing deals and partnerships with Big Tech and generative AI companies to ensure that their models have access to verified sources of news, while also compensating publishers and linking back to original articles.
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