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 living under extreme circumstances—distilled with striking assurance. During World War II, a group of soldiers—among them the wounded Stroszek (Peter Brogle)—are tasked with guarding a cache of weapons on a remote Greek island. As the tedium of their assignment increasingly wears on them, Stroszek is pushed to the brink of madness.