Brad Pitt has come on board Wim Wenders’ new documentary, From Inside Out – The Architecture of Peter Zumthor, as an executive producer. The film, shot over the last 14 years, moves through the buildings of the Pritzker Prize-winning Swiss architect — from the first family homes he designed in the Alps to the sprawling new Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which he completed this year.
Pitt was a major advocate for Zumthor’s controversial LACMA design. His support, which included speaking at a decisive LA County hearing in 2019, was considered key to getting the project over the line. The film opens with a “Brad Pitt presents” credit, reflecting Pitt’s “personal support for the project and his admiration for both Peter Zumthor and Wim Wenders,” the producers told The Hollywood Reporter.
Pitt has no financial interest in the film, and his Plan B production company was not involved in making it.
From Inside Out
The documentary will premiere out of competition at the Venice Film Festival next month. Like Wenders’ 2023 film Anselm, on the painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer, it was shot in 3D to immerse viewers in the spaces Zumthor creates. The film looks at some of Zumthor’s best-known projects, including the Therme Vals spa in Switzerland, the Kolumba Museum in Cologne and the Steilneset Memorial in Norway. It also traces his failed attempt to design the Topography of Terror museum in Berlin, a project abandoned after many years due to cost overruns.
The film was produced by Wenders’ Road Movies and DCM, with HanWay handling world sales. Wenders, whose documentaries include Pina and Buena Vista Social Club, has spent much of the last decade turning his camera on architecture and art, and From Inside Out continues that thread with a subject whose work he has championed for years.
Why It Matters
Wenders is one of cinema’s great documentarians, and his 3D architecture films have become an art-house fixture. Pitt’s name attached — along with his long, public history with LACMA — gives the project mainstream reach, while a Venice premiere all but guarantees awards-season attention. For design fans and documentary devotees alike, From Inside Out is shaping up as one of the festival’s must-sees.
