Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer
This documentary about legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog offers a kaleidoscopic picture of a radical visionary and dreamer.
On the occasion of the retrospective at EYE Amsterdam (18 June - 1 October), Lumière is screening some highlights from the oeuvre of ‘the last German romantic’: Werner Herzog (1942), director of unforgettable classics about small people with grand desires. In this documentary, we get to know the man, the director and those around him better.
Herzog made his first short film in 1962, with a camera stolen from the Munich Film Academy. He has been active as a filmmaker for sixty years and it seems he will continue filming until his dying breath. What motivates him to do so, is explored in this documentary portrait. In chronological order, Von Steinaecker reviews Herzog’s filmography, from early feature films (AUCH ZWERGE HABEN KLEIN ANGEFANGEN) and documentaries (DIE FLIEGENDE ÄRTZTE VON OSTAFRIKA) to later productions like GRIZZLY MAN and MEETING GORBACHEV. Fellow directors such as Chloé Zhao and Joshua Oppenheimer, his contemporaries Volker Schlöndorff and Wim Wenders, Herzog’s wife Lena, punk legend Patti Smith and actors such as Nicole Kidman and Christian Bale also speak about Herzog. The result is a portrait of a man who still has the curiosity of a child and knows how to capture that curiosity in images. For Herzog, filmmaking is a plunge into the unknown, a process in which you become aware that behind the triviality of things lies a deeper truth that can be chillingly beautiful, terrifying or moving.