Werner Herzog

Cast · Director · Writer

Born

September 5, 1942 · Munich, Bavaria, Germany

Birth name

Werner H. Stipetic

“If I had to climb into hell and wrestle the devil himself for one of my films, I would do it.” He studied History, Literature and Theater in Munich. Around 1960 he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship for the Film Seminar at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh (USA). Besides having taken university film seminars, his training in the field was completely self-taught. In 1962, at the age of twenty, he founded his own production company, Herzogfilmproduktionen. After a first stage making short films, he made his first feature film, "Lebenszeichen" (1968), subsidized by the German Film Institute, which sought to promote new filmmakers. The film won the German Film Prize (Deutscher Filmpreis). From there on, Herzog developed a unique career in which he has combined feature films, documentaries, opera directing, acting and screenwriting, portraying deeply committed stories, usually starring characters ambitious to the point of madness and in a tireless exploration of the world, like Herzog himself. His adventurous and poetic spirit has permeated each of his films, resulting in wonders such as the miracle of "Fitzcarraldo" (1982), a film for which he immersed an entire film crew in the Amazon Jungle and took a boat up a mountain.