Award winning recording artist Ry Cooder has composed the musical score for several Wim Wenders films including Paris, Texas and The End of Violence. Wenders now turns the camera on Cooder. In 1996 Ry Cooder gathered together some of the greatest names from the history of Cuban music to collaborate on the best selling and Grammy winning album The Buena Vista Social Club.

This ground-breaking documentary, inspired by the album, includes appearances by legendary performers Ry & Joaquim Cooder, Ibrahim Ferrer, Ruben Gonzales, Eliades Ochoa, Omara Portuondo, Compay Segundo and many other renowned Cuban Musicians.

Excited by these colorful characters and their extraordinary music, Wenders traveled to Havana, Cuba to chronicle the cooperation and camaraderie between Ry Cooder and his veteran friends - now known in Cuba as "los superablos" (the super-grandfathers) - as well as their dazzling sell-out concerts in Amsterdam and New York's Carnegie Hall in April and July 1998.

Wenders explains that he had no concept for the film other than trying "to do justice to this wonderful, warm, miraculous yet altogether real music." "Music is a treasure hunt," says Cooder "you dig and dig and sometimes you find something. In Cuba the music flows like a river," continues Wenders, "I want to make a film that'll just float on this river. Not interfere with it, just drift along."