The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
This cycle offers an opportunity to revisit the first period in the work of the prolific Werner Herzog, when he was establishing himself as one of the great names of new German cinema. From Bavaria to the Sahara, the filmmaker was already alternating between fiction and documentary to explore the themes that would be central in his work. With a dark romanticism, a biting eye and an epic breath, he examines the extreme experiences of existence, from ecstatic quests to the tipping point into madness, via the otherness of beings and the hostility of wide-open spaces.
Nuremberg, 1828. On Pentecost morning, a mysterious young man is discovered in the city's central square. No one knows who he is, and he can barely pronounce his name. It turns out that he has just been released from 17 years of captivity, and soon becomes the object of everyone's curiosity.
Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog is a German film director, screenwriter, author, actor, and opera director, regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema. Herzog started work on his first film Herakles in 1961, when he was nineteen. Since then he has produced, written, and directed more than sixty feature films and documentaries, such as Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974), Heart of Glass (1976), Stroszek (1977), Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), Fitzcarraldo (1982), Cobra Verde (1987), Lessons of Darkness (1992), Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997), My Best Friend (1999), Invincible (2000), Grizzly Man (2005), Encounters at the End of the World (2007), Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009), and Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010). He has published more than a dozen books of prose and directed many operas.
