Wim Wenders' 14-Year Peter Zumthor Documentary Premieres at Venice
A documentary 14 years in the making has premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Wim Wenders' 3D film From Inside Out – The Architecture of Peter Zumthor screened on 6 September 2026 at 14:00 in the Sala Grande, part of the festival's Venice Open – Out of Competition section (La Biennale di Venezia).
The two-hour film traces the career of Pritzker Prize-winning Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, journeying from intimate private homes to the monumental new David Geffen Galleries at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (The Hollywood Reporter). Those galleries, Zumthor's largest building, cost $724 million and were commissioned nearly two decades ago. The documentary also covers St. Benedict's Chapel, completed in 1988, and a memorial for burned witches above the Arctic Circle (The Hollywood Reporter).
The project began with a simple request. In 2012, the British architect David Chipperfield — then curator of the Venice Architecture Biennale — asked Wenders to make a short film about Zumthor. That initial request became a two-day shoot in Zumthor's office in Haldenstein, Switzerland, producing the 2012 short Notes on a Day in the Life of an Architect. What was meant to be a brief portrait kept growing, eventually becoming the feature-length documentary now screening on the Lido (The Hollywood Reporter).
Brad Pitt joined the film as an executive producer. Pitt, a long-time admirer of Zumthor's work, had publicly supported the architect's bid for the LACMA commission (The Hollywood Reporter).
Wenders is no stranger to artist documentaries. His filmography includes Buena Vista Social Club (1999), Pina (2011), The Salt of the Earth (2014), and Anselm (2023). He drew on a childhood love of architecture in shaping From Inside Out (The New York Times).
HanWay Films is handling worldwide sales on the title, which is now seeking distribution deals across territories (The Hollywood Reporter).
What makes the film unusual is the patience behind it. Fourteen years of access to one of the world's most private architects is a rare commodity, and the LACMA galleries — still under construction through much of the filming — give the documentary a structural arc that no planned project could have engineered.
