Wings of Desire was released in 1987. Its German title was Der Himmel über Berlin (Heaven over Berlin). The cast includes: Bruno Ganz ( as Damiel), Solveig Dommartin (as Marion), Otto Sander (as Cassiel), Curt Bois (as Homer), and Peter Falk (as himself). The film was written by Wim Wenders and Peter Handke. Cinematography was by Henri Alekan. The film was directed by Wim Wenders.

Two angels, Damiel and Cassiel, watch over the people of Berlin. As the film opens, Damiel stands on a rooftop, looking down at the people on the street. The angels hear the thoughts of people everywhere in the city. The angels are invisible to people in the real world. They listen with kindness and sympathy to the thoughts which are occurring in the minds of all the people in the city. The angels express caring and concern as they listen to the hopes and fears, anxiety and desperation of the people who walk on the street or sit in the subway.

The angels are eternal, but Damiel wishes for a place in the temporary world of the present. Damiel and Cassiel talk to each other, but cannot talk to people in the real world. Their presence is felt by people when they are nearby, but they do not have physical contact with people in the real world.

Damiel goes to watch the circus, and becomes attracted to Marion, a beautiful young woman who is a trapeze artist at the circus. She has a dream in which she sees Damiel.

Damiel comforts a man who has been injured in an accident, and listens to an elderly man named Homer, who is a survivor of the Holocaust. Damiel feels himself an outsider to the world of present-day reality. He does not seem to realize that, by being eternally present, and by caring for everyone he meets, he shares and becomes part of human experience.

Peter Falk senses that Damiel is nearby, even though the angel is invisible. Peter Falk is an actor working on a film project, but is also a former angel who has become part of the real world.

Peter Falk tells Damiel how good it feels to be able to have physical contact with the real world. Damiel cannot taste, touch, smell, or feel physical objects until he wakes up from a dream, and is hit on the head by a suit of armor which has fallen out of a helicopter in the sky.

Damiel begins his life as a person in the real world, and returns to see Marion, the trapeze artist whom he has longed for during his existence as an angel. They fall in love with each other.

A recurring element in the film is the narration of a poem written by Peter Handke, which begins, “Als das Kind Kind war” (“When the child was a child”). The poem describes s child’s consciousness of the world, which enables the narrator to have an immediate and spontaneous awareness of the world’s possibility.

The film also portrays symbols and themes inspired by Rainier Maria Rilke’s poetry. Rilke in the Duino Elegies uses The Angel as a symbol of a unity of consciousness that transcends human limitation. Rilke’s Angel is not related to Christianity, but represents a transcendent reality. The Angel is a transformation of the visible into the invisible. Rilke's Angel represents a unity of will and capability.