Directed by Werner Herzog • 2005 • United States
Starring Timothy Treadwell, Kathleen Parker, Warren Queeney

Werner Herzog’s gripping documentary chronicles one of the most extreme—and ultimately tragic—experiments in human-animal cohabitation ever attempted. For thirteen consecutive summers, si...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 1972 • West Germany, Mexico, Peru
Starring Klaus Kinski, Ruy Guerra, Helena Roho

The first of Werner Herzog’s legendary—and notoriously tempestuous—collaborations with actor Klaus Kinski is a feverish account of sixteenth-century Spanish conquistador Lope de Aguirre’s...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 1982 • West Germany
Starring Klaus Kinski, Claudia Cardinale

Werner Herzog’s infamously arduous productions were already legendary when he outdid himself with FITZCARRALDO, a feat as utterly quixotic and improbable as its protagonist. Klaus Kinski stars as the wild-ey...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 1979 • West Germany
Starring Klaus Kinski, Isabelle Adjani, Bruno Ganz

It is 1850 in the beautiful, perfectly-kept town of Wismar. Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz) is about to leave on a long journey over the Carpathian Mountains to finalize real-estate arrangements with ...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 2009 • United States
Starring Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer

Two of contemporary cinema’s most electrifying eccentrics, Werner Herzog and Nicolas Cage, join forces for a thoroughly unhinged pulp fever dream. Not—despite the title—a remake of or sequel to the si...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 2009 • United States
Starring Michael Shannon, Willem Dafoe, Chloë Sevigny

What strange series of events led a man to murder his mother with an ancient sword? Produced by David Lynch, Werner Herzog’s typically idiosyncratic take on a true crime unfolds as a fascinatin...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 1990 • Germany, France

One of director Werner Herzog’s most unsettling explorations of the madness that can seize men’s hearts, this haunting documentary recounts the reign of Jean-Bédel Bokassa, who ruled for eleven years as the self-declared emperor of the Central A...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 1992 • Germany

“The collapse of the stellar universe will occur–like creation–in grandiose splendor,” announces the quote (attributed to Blaise Pascal, but actually invented by the director) that begins Werner Herzog’s terrifyingly beautiful rumination on the ravaged ...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 1997 • Germany

Dieter Dengler, a German-American Navy pilot who was shot down over Vietnam in 1966, recounts his experiences as a POW in a Vietnamese prison, tortured and starved until fear and desperation compelled him to make daring escape. Travelling to Laos and Th...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 1999 • Germany

An engrossing look at one of cinema’s most intriguing partnerships, MY BEST FIEND chronicles Werner Herzog’s legendarily volatile friendship with actor Klaus Kinski. As Herzog delves into his history with Kinski in colorful detail—from the flat Kinski o...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 2003 • Germany

In this wondrous documentary about the power of spirituality, director Werner Herzog travels to Bodh Gaya, India, to capture the pilgrimage of hundreds of thousands of Buddhists, who make the arduous trek there to partake in a momentous six-week initiat...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 2005 • United Kingdom, France, Germany
Starring Brad Dourif, Donald Williams, Ellen Baker

Werner Herzog’s ability to find otherworldly wonder wherever he points his camera is on display in this sublime experimental science-fiction odyssey, in which he makes striking u...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 1977 • West Germany
Starring Bruno S., Eva Mattes, Clemens Scheitz

Werner Herzog’s tragically absurd tour through 1970s America stars the singular Bruno S. as an ostracized, alcoholic Berlin street musician who, joined by a prostitute (Eva Mattes) and his eccentric el...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 1979 • West Germany
Starring Klaus Kinski, Eva Mattes, Wolfgang Reichmann

Werner Herzog ventured into the dark depths of madness once again with this adaptation of the unfinished stage play by Georg Buchner, the story of a real-life nineteenth-century barber turned...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 1981 • West Germany

Werner Herzog’s portrait of all-American demagoguery focuses on Gene Scott, a televangelist whose fiery on-air tirades—against everything from the FCC to his own viewers—are contrasted with a behind-the-scenes portrait of an isolated, self-obsessed...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 1981 • West Germany

Werner Herzog’s fascination with both religious mysticism and American subcultures leads him to a Black church in Brooklyn, where he documents a fire-and-brimstone sermon by the minister Huie L. Rogers. As Rogers’s explosive oratorical style reache...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 1984 • West Germany

Focusing on a group of Nicaraguan Miskito Indians embroiled in a civil war against the Sandinistas they once called allies, BALLAD OF THE LITTLE SOLDIER takes an intimate look at the conflict from the perspective of the children being used by the M...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 1984 • West Germany, Australia
Starring Bruce Spence, Wandjuk Marika, Roy Marika

Werner Herzog heads to the Australian outback for this typically idiosyncratic variation on one of his pet themes: the uneasy relationship between modern man and nature. When an Austra...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 1985 • West Germany

Werner Herzog’s career-long concern with individuals who test the limits of human achievement receives one of its most extraordinary expressions in this portrait of mountaineers Hans Kammerlander and Reinhold Messner. Following the pair as they emb...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 1987 • West Germany
Starring Klaus Kinski, King Ampaw, José Lewgoy

This final collaboration between best fiends Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski plumbs the horrors of colonialism in a delirious cinematic nightmare. COBRA VERDE tells the story of a Brazilian rancher turn...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 1989 • Germany

Werner Herzog travels to the Sahel region of central Africa to document the unique courtship rituals of the nomadic Wodaabe tribe, whose men paint themselves in makeup and engage in an elaborate beauty pageant in hopes of attracting a mate. With rare in...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 1968 • West Germany
Starring Peter Brogle, Wolfgang Reichmann, Athina Zacharopoulou

Made when he was only twenty-six years old, the first feature film by Werner Herzog already displays many of his signatures—moments of odd, idiosyncratic poetry in a story of men livin...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 1970 • West Germany
Starring Helmut Döring, Paul Glauer, Gisela Hertwig

With his brilliantly anarchic second feature, Werner Herzog took his place as the enfant terrible of the New German Cinema. Cast entirely with dwarf actors, the film follows the chaos that erupts ...