For director Werner Herzog (Munich, 83 years old), the truth that matters goes beyond mere facts. Starting from the 1990s he began to use a term he coined himself, ecstatic truth, which refers to poetic truth, emotional truth, stylized truth that illuminates and moves. «It’s not about giving false news, but giving good news», he clarified forcefully in front of the packed auditorium of the 92NY cultural center in New York, where he presented his seventh book, The future of truth (The Future of Truth, Penguin Random House, no Spanish translation). And he gave an example of the quote at the beginning of his documentary Lessons of the Darkness (1992): “The collapse of the stellar universe will occur, like creation, in grandiose splendor,” which he attributed to the philosopher Blaise Pascal. “The quote was completely my invention. Honestly, I don’t think Pascal could have said it any better, but he allowed viewers to start from a high state and stay in that state throughout the documentary.” For the director, truth is a construct to navigate everyday life, and since we need beauty more than ever, it is up to us to transform it into a glorious experience.
Herzog’s career is prolific and covers topics as diverse as they are intriguing. He has dedicated films to the representation of mysterious characters such as Nosferatu or Kaspar Hauser. He has made documentaries about volcanoes, one man’s obsession with Alaskan brown bears, the devastation of Kuwait after the first Gulf War, murderers on death row, Gorbachev, cave paintings, Antarctica and meteorite impacts, among others. Ghost elephantswhich will premiere in March 2026 on Disney+, follows in the footsteps of South African explorer Steve Boyes in Angola as he attempts to discover whether there is a species of giant elephant still unknown to humans. Herzog’s curiosity has no limits. The director, who in addition to making more than 70 films has acted in and directed more than twenty works, confesses that he would also have liked to be an athlete, a mathematician or a chef.
He has made more documentaries than fiction films, not so much out of predilection, but due to financing problems. The key for him is to continue creating without stopping to wait for idyllic conditions. “If you don’t understand the rules of cinema, you’re not just wasting your time, but your life,” says the director, who won the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at this year’s Venice Film Festival. His best advice for the younger generation is: “Do it anyway.” An advocate of practice rather than theory, the director founded his own film school, Rogue Film School, through which he holds seminars and workshops on film acceleration, where around 50 directors from different countries commit to recording and editing a short film in nine days and screening it on the last day.
His cinema is visceral and wild. It involves risks, it is unpredictable. One of his most complex and appreciated productions was Fitzcarraldo (1982), which exemplifies this well. It tells the story of a man obsessed with the idea of building a work in the middle of the Peruvian jungle, something as risky as Herzog’s who decides to shoot with a crew of 14 people (according to what he says, one of them was bitten by a poisonous snake and had to amputate his foot), without assistants or walkie-talkie. They built a pier, created a pulley system, hauled a 320-ton ship up the mountains, endured torrential rain, the set was burned by the natives, two of their small planes crashed, and the director sold his boots for fish to feed the crew.
Furthermore, Mick Jagger and Jason Robards dropped out of filming, and Herzog opted for the eccentric Klaus Kinski, his fetish actor, with whom he had a turbulent relationship, which was reflected in the documentary. my intimate enemy. According to the director, Kinski was able to scream for an hour so loudly he could break glass, and the only reason he was able to direct the film in that chaos was the depth of his vision and his inner fire. His project and his life merge into the same thing; a commitment that becomes vital in everything he does. On one occasion he threatened to shoot Klaus Kinsi if he left filming; in another, he urged Oppenheimer, which he helped edit The art of killingto keep an entire scene he had intended to cut, warning him that otherwise “his life would be in vain”.
British documentarian André Singer, who has participated in 17 of Herzog’s films since 1989, either as producer, executive producer or co-director, highlights via email “his extraordinary talent” in tackling subjects “in surprising and unexpected ways.” And he exemplifies this in the interview that Herzog gave to Gorbachev, the last leader of the USSR, who began by saying: “Mr President, I am German, and probably the first German you met wanted to kill you”, alluding to when the Soviet leader refused to collaborate with the president of the GDR, Erich Honecker, which led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Jake Friedman, artist representative and Herzog admirer, personally shared an anecdote that also illustrates this original, irreverent and refreshing look that defines everything the director does. When introduced to him and explained that he lived in New York, Herzog (who lives in Los Angeles) responded: “Nothing ever happened in New York! The most important thing always happened in Los Angeles.” Friedman says that comment left him so stunned that he didn’t dare say anything else.
Singer also highlights the director’s ability to visualize and hold an entire narrative intact in his mind before turning on the camera. “In 2008, the Sky Arts channel asked Herzog to make a short film about the air O sweet girland Herzog, who had just read a book about the Mursi tribe in Ethiopia, had a vision: to bring together young couples in love from that tribe who would look into each other’s eyes and then turn their backs to leave. A few weeks later we camped in the Ethiopian wilderness and shot a mesmerizing short film, exactly as he had imagined it from the beginning.”
The director’s unique and passionate gaze arouses respect, admiration and fanaticism among professionals of all disciplines. “Every day I thank God that I live in the same era as Werner Herzog,” says Jerry Saltz, art critic of The New York Timesduring his presentation on 92NY.
Herzog is the father of three children and his third wife is photographer Lena Pisetski, 28 years his junior, who claims that during their first year of their relationship she was unaware of his career (he told her he was a stunt coordinator). They have been together for three decades.
Both professionally and personally, Werner Herzog continues to challenge reality with the same belief: that beauty always tells the truth.
