Wim Wenders’ new Peter Zumthor documentary, From Inside Out – The Architecture of Peter Zumthor, brings the Swiss architect’s atmospheric buildings to the screen this September. Filmed over 14 years in 3D, the documentary will have its world premiere out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, running from September 2nd to 12th, 2026.
The film moves beyond a conventional architectural portrait, seeking to make Zumthor’s spaces physically palpable. Wenders follows his buildings through visitors, inhabitants, users and craftspeople, capturing architecture as something encountered through the body and senses.
Peter Zumthor’s contemporary architecture through light, material and place
From Inside Out asks how architecture shapes the way we perceive and inhabit the world. Wenders focuses on atmosphere, material, light and the sensation of occupying a place, allowing Zumthor’s buildings to speak through experience.
The 114-minute film moves between intimate early houses and major commissions, including the David Geffen Galleries at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Therme Vals, the Kolumba Museum, Bruder Klaus Field Chapel and the Steilneset Memorial, created with Louise Bourgeois. It also follows the forthcoming Wyss Building for Fondation Beyeler and revisits Zumthor’s unrealised Topography of Terror Museum in Berlin.
Venice Film Festival premiere: from private houses to LACMA
The Venice Film Festival will screen From Inside Out – The Architecture of Peter Zumthor as part of Venice Open – Out of Competition. The official public screening is scheduled for September 6th, 2026, at 14:00 in Sala Grande, with additional screenings on September 5th.
Brad Pitt serves as executive producer and has long championed Zumthor’s work, publicly supporting the architect’s LACMA design during a crucial Los Angeles County hearing in 2019. Produced by Wim Wenders and Road Movies in collaboration with DCM, the documentary is the result of more than a decade of filming.
Ultimately, Wenders portrays architecture as something that continues to live through those who enter, inhabit and remember it. From Inside Out offers a portrait of Zumthor’s buildings not simply as works of contemporary architecture, but as places that can alter how we experience the world.
