Until the End of the World

Until the End of the World (Bis ans Ende der Welt, 1991) is Wim Wenders' ambitious sci-fi road movie you can watch online on iFILM. The year is 1999, a rogue nuclear satellite threatens every city on Earth, and Claire (Solveig Dommartin) couldn't care less — she's chasing a mysterious American named Sam Farber (William Hurt) across three continents, from Paris to Tokyo to the Australian outback.

Sam is carrying his father's invention — a device that can record human dreams and restore sight to the blind. Close behind: Claire's ex Eugene (Sam Neill) playing amateur detective, and a professional tracker who keeps losing the trail. Max von Sydow plays the inventor father, Jeanne Moreau appears as his wife, and the whole sprawling chase was shot across fifteen countries. Wenders released a nearly five-hour director's cut years later — it plays almost like a separate film.

What Wenders smuggled into the adventure genre holds up eerily well: in the film's second half, characters get hooked on replaying recordings of their own dreams and stop functioning in the world. In 1991, that was science fiction. Stream Until the End of the World (1991) online on iFILM.