From a screenplay by Peter Handke that was inspired by Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, Wenders created this second film in his ground-breaking "road trilogy" series (which included Alice in the Cities and Kings of the Road). Wilhelm, a young and discontented writer, sets out from home to roam the country for adventure and inspiration. Along the way he meets an old singer, an actress, a suicidal industrialist, a poet, and a mute adolescent juggler (Nastassja Kinski in her screen debut), through whom he feeds his embryonic vocation as a writer and attempts to reconcile with the specters of Germany’s past.