Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog was born Werner Stipetić on 5 September 1942 in Munich and grew up in the Bavarian village of Sachrang near the Austrian border; he was the second son of Elisabeth and Dietrich Herzog. He left formal university studies in history and German literature and instead began making films in the early 1960s, creating his first short Herakles in 1962 and establishing his own production company in 1963. Herzog emerged as a central figure in the New German Cinema movement alongside filmmakers such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders, and Volker Schlöndorff, developing a distinctive approach that favored improvisation, location-driven shoots, and mixing professional actors with non-actors. His early feature Signs of Life (1968) won the Silver Bear for Best First Film at the Berlin Film Festival, establishing his reputation and enabling further projects. Through the 1970s and 1980s Herzog made a sequence of acclaimed and often controversial films, including Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) — which won the Grand Prix at Cannes — Heart of Glass (1976), Stroszek (1977), Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), and Fitzcarraldo (1982), the latter earning Herzog the Best Director prize at Cannes. His collaborations with the volatile actor Klaus Kinski were both celebrated and infamous, producing intense performances and documented conflicts recounted in Herzog’s later memoirs and the documentary My Best Fiend. From the 1990s onward Herzog increasingly focused on documentaries and international co-productions, producing major non-fiction works such as Grizzly Man (2005), Encounters at the End of the World (2007, Oscar-nominated), Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010), and Into the Abyss (2011). He has also directed operas worldwide, authored books including travel diaries and reflections on filmmaking (e.g., Of Walking in Ice and The Conquest of the Useless), and acted in a number of films and TV projects, maintaining an active creative presence into his 80s.