The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick

The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick is now playing virtually through 4/21.

Access the ND/NF at 50: Retrospective virtually nationwide!

• FLC Virtual Cinema: Free to the general public on April 16 at noon, with early access for FLC members starting April 13 at noon.
• MoMA Virtual Cinema: Free exclusively for MoMA members starting April 16th.

Wenders’s second feature, adapted from Peter Handke’s novel of the same name, is a tautly constructed, Hitchcockian tale of anomie and isolation. After goalkeeper Josef Bloch (Arthur Brauss) is ejected from a football match, he wanders around Vienna, spends the night with a cinema cashier, and commits a seemingly purposeless crime. As always, Wenders’s use of music is unerringly precise and surprising—“The Lion Sleeps Tonight” as the anthem to an existential crisis?—and as Bloch puts another coin in the jukebox, the film charts his moral disintegration with a resolute lack of sentimentality. 

Presented in collaboration with the German Film Office, an initiative of the Goethe-Institut and German Films.