It centers on the last days of Ray's own life, who was already known worldwide for his 1955 classic film Rebel Without a Cause.

Excerpts from Ray's The Lusty Men (1952) and his unfinished final work We Can't Go Home Again are featured.

Ray appears in a minor role in Wenders' film The American Friend.

Jim Jarmusch, Ray's personal assistant at the time — and later a notable filmmaker in his own right — can be briefly glimpsed sitting at an editing console.

When Wenders goes to Vassar to attend a lecture, a brief one-man performance is seen onstage, Franz Kafka's "A Report for an Academy", about an ape who becomes a man.