Werner Herzog

Filmmakers

Werner Herzog (né Stipetić; born September 5, 1942) is a German film director, screenwriter, author, actor, and opera director. A figure of the New German Cinema. His films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with unique talents in obscure fields, or individuals who are in conflict with nature. He made his first film in 1961 at the age of 19. Since then he has produced, written, and directed more than sixty feature films and documentaries. He has also published more than a dozen books of prose, and directed as many operas.

He made five films with actor Klaus Kinski: Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), with Helena Rojo, Del Negro, Ruy Guerra, Peter Berling, Cecilia Rivera, Dany Ades, and Armando Polanah; Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), with Isabelle Adjani, Bruno Ganz, Roland Topor, and Walter Ladengast; Woyzceck (1979), with Eva Mattes, Wolfgang Reichmann, and Willy Semmelrogge; Fitzcarraldo (1982), with Claudia Cardinale, José Lewgoy, Miguel Ángel Fuentes, Paul Hittscher, Huerequeque Enrique Bohórquez, Grande Otelo, and Peter Berling; and Cobra Verde (1987), with King Ampaw and José Lewgoy. Their shaky relationship was chronicled in documentaries such as Burden of Dreams (1982) and My Best Fiend (1999).

Other notable films include Where the Green Ants Dream (1984), with Bruce Spence; Scream of Stone (1991), with Donald Sutherland, Vittorio Mezzogiorno, Mathilda May, Stefan Glowacz, and Brad Dourif; Invincible (2000), with Tim Roth; Rescue Dawn (2006), with Christian Bale, Steve Zahn, Jeremy Davies, and Toby Huss; Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009), with Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer, Alvin ‘Xzibit’ Joiner, and Fairuza Balk; My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009), with Michael Shannon, Willem Dafoe, Chloë Sevigny, Udo Kier, Michael Peña, Grace Zabriskie, and Dourif; Queen of the Desert (2015), with Nicole Kidman, James Franco, Damian Lewis, Jay Albdo, Robert Pattinson, and Jenny Agutter; Salt and Fire (2016), with Shannon, Veronica Ferres, and Gael García Bernal; Family Romance, LLC (2019), with Yuichi Ishii and Mahiro Tanimoto.

He has also acted in such films as Vincent Ward’s What Dreams May Come (1998), with Robin Williams, Cuba Gooding Jr., Annabella Sciorra, and Max von Sydow; Harmony Korine’s Julien Donkey-Boy (1999), with Ewen Bremner and Sevigny; Mister Lonely (2007), with Diego Luna, Samantha Morton, Denis Lavant, James Fox, Anita Pallenberg and Leos Carax; Zak Penn’s The Grand (2007), with Ray Romano, Woody Harrelson, Chris Parnell, Jason Alexander, Dennis Farina, David Cross, Gabe Kaplan, Michael Karnow, and Cheryl Hines; Christopher McQuarrie’s Jack Reacher (2012), with Tom Cruise, Rosamund Pike, Robert Duvall, David Oyelowo, Richard Jenkins, and Jai Courtney; plus voice roles in the English dub of Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises (2013), with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Martin Short, William H. Macy, Mae Whitman, Mandy Patinkin, Jennifer Grey, Stanley Tucci, and Elijah Wood; Penguins of Madagascar (2014), with Tom McGrath, Chris Miller, Christopher Knights, Conrad Vernon, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ken Jeong, Annet Mahendru, Peter Stormare, and John Malkovich; and Orion and the Dark (2024), with Jacob Tremblay, Paul Walter Hauser, Colin Hanks, Mia Akemi Brown, Ike Barinholtz, Nat Faxon, Golda Rosheuvel, Natasia Demetriou, Aparna Nancherla, Carla Gugino, Matt Dellapina, and Angela Bassett.

French filmmaker François Truffaut once called Herzog “the most important film director alive.” American film critic Roger Ebert said that Herzog “has never created a single film that is compromised, shameful, made for pragmatic reasons, or uninteresting. Even his failures are spectacular.” He was named one of the world’s 100 most influential people by Time magazine in 2009.

Each review will be linked to the title below.

(*seen originally in theaters)

(**seen rereleased in theaters)

Director/Writer

  • Herakles (1962) – short
  • Game in the Sand (1964) – short
  • The Unprecedented Defense of the Fortress Deutschkreuz (1967) – short
  • Last Words (1968) – short
  • Signs of Life (1968)
  • Precautions Against Fanatics (1969) – short
  • The Flying Doctors of East Africa (1970) – TV documentary
  • Even Dwarves Started Small (1970)
  • Fata Morgana (1971) – documentary
  • Land of Silence and Darkness (1971) – documentary
  • Handicapped Future (1971) – TV documentary
  • Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)
  • The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (1974) – documentary
  • The Enigma of Kasper Hauser (1974)
  • How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck… (1976) – TV documentary
  • Heart of Glass (1976)
  • No One Will Play with Me (1976) – short
  • Stroszek (1977)
  • La Soufrière (1977) – documentary short
  • Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)
  • Woyzeck (1979)
  • Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980) – directed by Les Blank – documentary short – writer
  • God’s Angry Men (1981) – TV documentary
  • Huie’s Sermon (1981) – TV documentary
  • Fitzcarraldo (1982)
  • Where Green Ants Dream (1984)
  • Ballad of the Little Soldier (1984) – TV documentary
  • The Dark Glow of the Mountains (1985) – TV documentary
  • Portrait Werner Herzog (1986) – documentary short
  • Cobra Verde (1987)
  • Les Gaulois (1988) – short
  • Herdsmen of the Sun (1989) – TV documentary
  • Echoes From a Somber Empire (1990) – documentary
  • Scream of Stone (1991)
  • Jag Mandir (1991) – TV documentary
  • Lessons of Darkness (1992) – documentary
  • Bells from the Deep: Faith and Superstition in Russia (1993) – documentary
  • Gesualdo: Death for Five Voices (1995) – TV documentary
  • The Transformation of the World Into Music (1996) – TV documentary
  • Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997) – documentary
  • My Best Fiend (1999) – documentary
  • Julianes Sturz in den Dschungel (1999) – TV documentary
  • Invincible (2001)
  • Pilgrimage (2001) – documentary short
  • Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet (2002) – directed with Aki Kaurismäki, Victor Erice, Jim Jarmusch, Wim Wnders, Spike Lee, & Chen Kaige – anthology
  • Wheel of Time (2003) – documentary
  • The White Diamond (2004) – documentary
  • Incident at Loch Ness (2004) – directed by Zack Penn – co-writer, actor
  • Grizzly Man (2005) – documentary
  • The Wild Blue Yonder (2005)
  • Rescue Dawn (2006)
  • Encounters at the End of the World (2007) – documentary
  • Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)
  • La Bohème (2009) – documentary short
  • My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? (2009)
  • Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (2010) – documentary
  • Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010) – documentary
  • Into the Abyss (2011) – documentary
  • Ode to the Dawn of Man (2011) – short
  • On Death Row (2012 – 2013) – documentary miniseries
  • From One Second to the Next (2013) – documentary short
  • Queen of the Desert (2015)
  • Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World (2016) – documentary
  • Salt and Fire (2016)
  • Into the Inferno (2016) – documentary
  • Meeting Gorbachev (2018) – co-directed with André Singer – documentary
  • Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin (2019) – documentary
  • Family Romance, LLC. (2019)
  • Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds (2020) – documentary
  • The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft (2022) – documentary
  • Theatre of Thought (2022) – documentary
  • Ghost Elephants (2025) – documentary
  • Bucking Fastard (202-)

Actor/Self

  • Tales of the Dumpster Kid (1971) – directed by Edgar Reitz & Ula Stöckl
  • Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers (1980) – directed by Les Blank – self – documentary
  • Room 666 (1982) – directed by Wim Wenders – self – documentary
  • Burden of Dreams (1982) – directed by Les Blank – self – documentary
  • Man of Flowers (1983) – directed by Paul Cox
  • Tokyo-Ga (1985) – directed by Wim Wenders – self – documentary
  • Bride of the Orient (1989) – directed by Urs Odermatt
  • Hard to Be a God (1990) – directed by Peter Fleischmann
  • Tales from the Opera (1994) –
  • Burning Heart (1995)
  • What Dreams May Come (1998) – directed by Vincent Ward
  • Julien Donkey-Boy (1999) – directed by Harmony Korine
  • Mister Lonely (2007) – directed by Harmony Korine
  • The Grand (2007) – directed by Zak Penn
  • Plastic Bag (2009) – directed by Ramin Bahrani – short
  • Jack Reacher (2012) – directed by Christopher McQuarrie
  • Home from Home (2013) – directed by Edgar Reitz
  • The Wind Rises (2013)** – directed by Hayao Miyazaki – English dub
  • Lemonade War (2014) – directed by Ramin Bahrani – short
  • Penguins of Madagascar (2014) – directed by Eric Darnell & Simon J. Smith
  • Freaks of Nature (2015) – directed by Robbie Pickering
  • Onion and the Dark (2024) – directed by Sean Charmatz