In 1987 Ganz first played the role of the angel Damiel in Wim Wenders's "Wings of Desire". He reprised the role in "Faraway, So Close!" in 1993. Ganz appeared in "The Reader" as a Holocaust survivor and as police officer Horst Herold in "The Baader Meinhof Complex", which were both nominated for the 81st Academy Awards (Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Film respectively). In 2011, he appeared as a former Stasi operator opposite Liam Neeson in "Unknown". Among Ganz's later roles were the grandfather in the literary adaptation "Heidi" (2015), a pseudo-scientific healer in Sally Potter's "The Party" (2017) and a Vergil-like figure in Lars von Trier's "The House that Jack Built" (2018).