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Werner Herzog And Peter Zeitlinger Set For Camerimage Honors

Camerimage’s special award for cinematographer-director duos will be handed to Werner Herzog and Peter Zeitlinger. Both filmmakers will receive the award in person at Camerimage’s upcoming 31st edition, where they will meet with the festival audience in Toruń, Poland, and present a retrospective review of their films, including both feature and documentary productions. Zeitlinger and Herzog have collaborated for 30 years. Alongside their first joint venture, Death for Five Voices (1995), their productions include the documentaries Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997), My Best Fiend (1999), Wheel of Time (2003), Grizzly Man (2005), Encounters at the End of the World (2007), Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010), Into the Abyss (2011), From One Second to the Next (2013), Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World (2016), Into the Inferno (2016), Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds (2020), Theatre of Thought (2022), and the feature films Invincible (2001), Rescue Dawn (2006), Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009), My Son,...

Nearly two decades ago, “March of the Penguins” crossed a frontier hardly any nonfiction film ever does: not just the Antarctic Circle, but the even more remote $100 million mark at the global box office. A bona fide global phenomenon, Luc Jacquet’s wondrous nature doc got audiences from practically every continent to turn their attention to the South Pole and the adorable, surprisingly relatable emperor penguins its director found there.

The focus of “March” (and its 12-years-later sequel) was the 100-kilometer trek these remarkable black-and-white birds do between their mating grounds and the water. What undeniable force compels them to make that journey? In “Antarctica Calling,” it’s a different but no less irresistible urge that fascinates Jacquet: specifically, the almost-magnetic pull that draws the French filmmaker back to the South Pole time and again. He’s been coming since he was 23 years old. Now in his mid-50s,...

Werner Herzog has spent much of his time on this Earth staring directly into one kind of abyss or another — the molten heart of a volcano, the melting ice sheets of the Antarctic, the empty hollow of a chicken’s soul — but on the brink of his 80th birthday, cinema’s most unflappable nihilist finally turns his attention to an abyss so impenetrable that it seems to be staring right back at him: The future. It’s the largest and most impenetrable void that Herzog has ever dared to explore, and the closer it gets, the harder it becomes for him to see himself in its reflection.

That opacity is at the core of Herzog’s bemused and discursive “Theater of Thought,” His best hope: The human brain. Whatever the future holds, it will spring from the same folded bundle of tissue that got us to the present, and likewise...

Feature documentary “The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft,” directed by German filmmaker Werner Herzog and distributed by Abacus Media Rights, has been acquired by Arte for France and Germany.

In addition, ahead of its official launch at MipTV in Cannes, Amr has pre-sold the feature, about French volcanologists Maurice and Katia Krafft, to BBC Storyville for the U.K., Dr in Denmark, Svt in Sweden and Nrk in Norway.

Written, directed and narrated by Herzog, “The Fire Within” pays homage to the Kraffts, who left an archive of more than 200 hours of footage.

Herzog has produced, written and directed more than 60 narrative and documentary feature films, including “Grizzly Man,” “Invincible,” “Encounters at the End of the World” and “Cave of Forgotten Dreams.” He was named one of the world’s 100 most influential people by Time magazine in 2009.

The film is produced by Brian Leith Productions, Bonne Pioche and Titan Films.

Exclusive: UTA has signed award-winning filmmaker Erik Nelson (Terror and Glory: 1945) and his production company Creative Differences for worldwide representation in all areas.

Nelson is an IDA Award winner who most recently directed and produced the Discovery feature documentary Terror and Glory: 1945, which focused on the final months of World War II and its consequences. He previously wrote, directed and produced the World War II documentary The Cold Blue for HBO Max—also helming A Gray State, a prescient true-crime look at the culture of conspiracy, released in 2017. All three films hold a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Nelson is otherwise best known for his collaborations with Oscar-nominated filmmaker Werner Herzog. The duo produced four films together including the Oscar-nominated Encounters at the End of the World, Grizzly Man, Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Into The Abyss, with Herzog narrating Nelson’s animated feature Dinotasia and exec producing A Gray State.

Xiaofan (“Quentin”) Shi is a Chinese visual artist and photographer who lives between New York and Beijing. He has previously directed three short films – “A Parisian Movie” (2011), “In a Lovely Place” (2017) and “Love Letter” (2019). In his directorial long feature film debut “Café by the Highway” which has just had its international premiere in the main competition of the Moscow International Film Festival, Shi’s artistic background takes over, with the film taking shape of neatly arranged artistic ideas that fill the holes in the script.

After being sacked from her barista job in Shanghai, Yuanfang (Yase Liu) returns to her hometown Baima to make peace with her estranged father. But once she gets home, there is neither sign of him, nor her cats. The old man is somewhere “on a top secret special task”, she is told, and almost like he knew she was coming, he arranged her a job.

One of the first scenes from Robin Petré's From The Wild Sea shows the act of releasing rescued and cured seals into the wild. A group of volunteers and specialists regularly scout the inaccessible windy English coasts, trying to save the animal remnants of wild nature, struggling with man and his waste. After the cages are opened, the seals sluggishly crawl out onto the cold sand, reluctantly and slowly heading back to the sea. As if they know that in a moment they would need help again, as if they did not want to return to their home: less wild and more covered with plastic everyday.

This scene involuntarily evokes associations with the famous sequence from Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End Of The World from 2007, which observes the walk of a lonely penguin that, with hopeless determination, goes in the opposite direction then the flock, striding to meet the unknown.

Werner Herzog’s “Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds” is an aptly meditative travelogue from the philosophical German director. In the last decade or so, Herzog’s documentary output has focused on, among other topics, volcanoes (“Into the Inferno”), prehistoric paintings (“Cave of Forgotten Dreams”) and Antarctica (“Encounters at the End of the World”). In “Fireball,” co-directed by Clive Oppenheimer and available now on AppleTV , he turns his attention to meteors and comets.

Herzog and Oppenheimer jet to all corners of the globe to engage with astrologists, geologists, religious leaders, self-made scientists, space rock collectors, and people in communities living around some of the world’s largest craters.

In one of the film’s most intriguing scenes, Herzog offers a tribute to Hollywood’s contribution to the subject. He shows us a slightly abridged version of the climactic comet strike in Mimi Leder’s 1998 disaster flick “Deep Impact.”

“Deep Impact” is a movie that,...

We all know how charming Werner Herzog can be. Since he first narrated his 1974 documentary “The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner,” he has learned to put himself as a character in his films behind the camera, as probing questioner and witty commentator. More recently this led to acting jobs, including The Client in Season One of Disney series “The Mandalorian.”

Now, the prodigious director of some 20 fiction films, 31 documentary features (“Grizzly Man”) and 18 operas (“The Magic Flute”), has fallen in sync with a collaborator on his explorations into the awe and mystery of science, Cambridge volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer (“Eruptions That Shook the World”).

The two men first met on an Antarctica volcano during filming on Herzog’s only Oscar-nominated film, “Encounters at the End of the World” (2007), the filmmaker said during a recent video interview (below). Oppenheimer stood out among the high-tech down jackets by wearing “a tweed jacket like...

We all know how charming Werner Herzog can be. Since he first narrated his 1974 documentary “The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner,” he has learned to put himself as a character in his films behind the camera, as probing questioner and witty commentator. More recently this led to acting jobs, including The Client in Season One of Disney series “The Mandalorian.”

Now, the prodigious director of some 20 fiction films, 31 documentary features (“Grizzly Man”) and 18 operas (“The Magic Flute”), has fallen in sync with a collaborator on his explorations into the awe and mystery of science, Cambridge volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer (“Eruptions That Shook the World”).

The two men first met on an Antarctica volcano during filming on Herzog’s only Oscar-nominated film, “Encounters at the End of the World” (2007), the filmmaker said during a recent video interview (below). Oppenheimer stood out among the high-tech down jackets by wearing “a tweed jacket like...

In his latest science doc, the existential film-maker considers the cataclysmic threat from space – as real now as it ever was

In 2007, Werner Herzog made a movie about Antarctica called Encounters at the End of the World, where he met the Cambridge University geographer and seismologist Clive Oppenheimer. The resulting partnership has opened up whole new adventures for Herzog in pop anthropology and the history of ideas. Together, Herzog and Oppenheimer made Into the Inferno in 2016, with Oppenheimer largely in front of the camera and Herzog behind, supplying the unmistakable rasping voiceover with its occasional flourishes of nihilist black comedy. Into the Inferno was all about how volcanos create strange belief systems and supplicant ideologies in the humans around them.

Related: Werner Herzog: 'I'm fascinated by trash TV. The poet must not avert his eyes'...

Werner Herzog has always thirsted for the uncanny. It’s there in the primal awe he imparted to a grizzly bear in “Grizzly Man,” the cracked rapture of Klaus Kinski’s glowering megalomaniacal conquistador in “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” and the mysteriously intoxicating natural ice-sculpture formations of “Encounters at the End of the World.”

In his new documentary, “Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds,” Herzog hits us with an image in the first two minutes that’s as jaw-droppingly whoa! as any footage you’ve ever seen of a UFO that convinced you, for just a moment, that it was a genuine alien visitation. We see dash cam footage, shot on a highway in Chelyabinsk, Siberia, in 2013, of a fire-light meteor streaking across the sky and plunging toward earth, like an airliner crashing right before our eyes. We witness the fireball photographed from assorted locations and angles — roadways, a public square — as Herzog,...

“Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds,” the upcoming documentary from acclaimed film director Werner Herzog, is set to premiere on Apple TV on November 13. The streaming service revealed the trailer for the project on Friday morning.

Per Apple, “Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds” takes viewers on an extraordinary journey to discover how shooting stars, meteorites, and deep impacts have focused the human imagination on other realms and worlds, and on our past and our future. The upcoming documentary hails from Herzog and volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer, who previously appeared in Herzog’s “Encounters at the End of the World” and “Into the Inferno.”

Although IndieWire’s David Ehrlich had mixed feelings about “Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds” in his grade B- review of the documentary in September, he nonetheless praised Herzog’s work on the project.

“If you learn anything from this documentary, it will be that nukes would be more effective...

Like tumbling autumn leaves, fall film festivals in Toronto, New York and more have added to the pile of must-see documentaries that could figure in the 2021 Oscar race for Best Documentary Feature.

Possible contenders include Oscar winner Errol Morris‘s yet-untitled doc for Showtime about LSD advocate Timothy Leary. Also, Lisa Cortes and Liz Garbus‘s voter suppression film, “All In: The Fight for Democracy,” zeroes in on Stacey Abrams, the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election and the continued threat to our elections; it just dropped on Amazon Prime. Oscar-nominated “Fire at Sea” director Gianfranco Rosi showed his latest effort, “Notturno,” in Venice and Toronto; shot across three years in Middle East locales near war zones, the doc focuses on how people from the region try to reclaim their everyday lives. It lacks a U.S. distributor.

Sam Pollard showed his IFC Films release “MLK/ FBI”in Toronto and New York, chronicling...

By my reckoning, Werner Herzog became the first feature director to have shot films on all seven continents when he made it to Antarctica in 2009 for Encounters at the End of the World. He’s back there again, and to nearly every other continent as well, for his latest documentary, Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds, a consideration of what will happen when (as the director considers inevitable) Earth is struck by a giant meteor the likes of which wiped out the dinosaurs some 66 million years ago. Despite its heavy, apocalyptic concerns, the new film is relatively lightweight by Herzog’s standards, as it’s basically a series of chats with scientists and specialists laying out the history of asteroids smacking the planet and speculating about future collisions and they would mean for the world. Apple TV has acquired broadcast rights.

By the director’s vaunted and idiosyncratic standards, Fireball is relatively conventional,...

Werner Herzog says in his new film “Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds” that to be a scientist you need a sense of wonder. That’s a quality that’s been true of just about all of Herzog’s documentaries, and in researching the science of meteorites with Clive Oppenheimer, he aimed to capture the beauty that scientists feel when exploring the unknown.

“Fireball” melds the science and mathematics of meteorites and asteroids with the culture, religion and mythologies that have grown over millennia out of this fascination with these ancient objects from outer space. And by teaming up with Oppenheimer as they did on “Encounters at the End of the World,” Herzog asks bigger, more spiritual questions than just wondering where space rocks came from.

“Clive never has a boring moment in him, and it was very visual, very beautiful, but I knew it had to do with science, but with the awe of discovery,...

By Glenn Dunks

We're not covering TIFF more broadly this year, but I was lucky to snag a screener or two so we'll be writing about them in a couple of additional Doc Corner columns.

One of my favourite bits of movie trivia is that Werner Herzog is the only filmmaker to have ever directed feature-length films on every single continent. He completed that unique party trick with his 2007 Oscar-nominated documentary Encounters at the End of the World. I’m sure that if he could, he would make a movie in space. For now, however, his latest feature doc about the elements of space will have to suffice.

Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds begins in the terrestrial outback of Australia and ends in the shimmering blue plateaus of Antarctica with just about every other continent in between (he just can’t help himself). Herzog traces the history of meteorites with...

In the world of nonfiction filmmaking, few things are as simultaneously comforting and provocative as the voice of Werner Herzog philosophizing and rhapsodizing about the implications of one thing or another. He’s been doing it for decades now in his documentaries, and in recent years he’s specialized in musings about the wonders of science and the natural world: caves in “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” volcanoes in “Into the Inferno,” Antarctica in “Encounters at the End of the World.”

Herzog’s new film, “Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds,” fits right into that continuum – and like “Into the Inferno,” it’s co-directed with Clive Oppenheimer, a Cambridge professor and scientist who in many ways serves as Herzog’s tour guide into this world. The new film has a bit of the feel of “Werner Herzog’s Greatest Hits” to it, because it goes back into caves and to a volcanic...

Exclusive: Discovery and Abramorama are teaming for a virtual theatrical and broadcast rollout of Apocalypse ‘45, a documentary from Erik Nelson that recounts the harrowing end of World War II through the eyes of 24 men who lived through the events and using never-before-seen footage. The documentary will get a two-week exclusive virtual cinema run beginning August 14, leading into the the film’s Labor Day Weekend broadcast on Discovery Channel.

The timing coincides with the 75th anniversary of VJ Day on August 15, when the Japanese forces surrendered to the Allies, with the National WW II Museum in New Orleans and the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York among those participating in screening events. An invite-only premiere is set for Thursday.

Nelson, a longtime collaborator of Werner Herzog has followed up his previous archival feature The Cold Blue with this doc, for which the National Archives allowed previously denied access to more than 700 reels of footage, covering the harrowing expanse of the final months of WWII in the Pacific that culminated in the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The footage, which includes film shot by director John Ford capturing the ruins of the Pacific Fleet after the attack on Pearl Harbor, has been digitally restored in 4K and in color.

Interviews with the two dozen men who lived through the events make up the film’s narration, guiding viewers from the flag-raising at Iwo Jima in February 1945, Okinawa in April, the New Mexico desert bomb tests in July and the air war over Japan in the summer.

Check out the trailer here:

“This was an important time in our nation’s history, and it is vital that we never forget the sacrifices of the people who lived through it,” said Nancy Daniels, Chief Brand Officer at Discovery and Factual. “Erik’s documentary delivers their stories with stunning, never-before-seen footage and raw emotion. With the 75th anniversary, it is the perfect opportunity to bring this timely film to Discovery audiences in multiple ways.”

Said Abramorama principals Richard Abramowitz and Karol Martesko-Fenster: “We are honored to be partnering with Discovery to release Erik’s astonishing film to mark this momentous time in our history. Now more than ever we need the kind of heroes who understand the consequences of their actions.”

Apocalypse 45 is produced by Peter Hankoff and Elisabeth M. Hartjens, with Clark Bunting, Daniels, Dave Harding and Howard Swartz executive producers.

Here’s the poster:...

Werner Herzog says the success of Disney Plus series “The Mandalorian,” in which he plays The Client, has made him think it’s time to park his acting career.

Speaking to Oscar-winning “Amy” director Asif Kapadia on Monday as part of the BFI at Home series on BFIYouTube, Herzog said, “I have done a lot more acting recently, and I have to review it, because it takes away too much attention from the real things that I’m doing.”

By “real,” Herzog is referring to his work as a filmmaker. Ostensibly, the German director was chatting to Kapadia about “Family Romance LLC,” which has just launched on the BFI Player in the U.K. However, the prolific Herzog spent as much time enthusiastically talking about his upcoming documentary “Fireball,” which looks at how shooting stars, meteorites and deep impacts have fired up the human imagination to learn more about the universe.

Apple has acquired rights to Werner Herzog’s astronomy documentary “Fireball” for its Apple Original film slate and will premiere the film on Apple TV Plus in more than 100 territories.

Herzog collaborated with British professor Clive Oppenheimer on the project. The duo teamed on the Academy Award-nominated Antarctic documentary “Encounters at the End of the World” and the Emmy-nominated “Into the Inferno.“

“Fireball” explores how shooting stars, meteorites and deep impacts have focused the human imagination on other realms and worlds, and on our past and our future. It’s a Werner Herzog Film production from Spring Films. The film is produced by André Singer & Lucki Stipetić, executive produced by Richard Melman and made with the help and support of Sandbox Films.

Apple Original’s documentaries include “Boys State”; “The Elephant Queen”; “Beastie Boys Story” and docuseries “Visible: Out On Television.” “Boys State” won the U.S. documentary competition at...

Apple announced Friday that it will release a new Werner Herzog documentary, “Fireball,” on its Apple TV platform. The film explores how shooting stars, meteorites, and deep impacts on Earth have shaped human mythology and focused our attention on other realms and worlds.

“Fireball” will mark the third collaboration between the legendary director and geoscientist Clive Oppenheimer, who is co-directing the doc.

Oppenheimer, a professor of volcanology at the University of Cambridge, appeared in Herzog’s 2007 Antarctica-set Oscar-nominated “Encounters at the End of the World,” and again in Netflix’s 2016 doc “Into the Inferno.” That most recent film earned an Emmy nomination and followed the pair as they traveled the world to explore various volcanic sites. Much like “Fireball,” that film also drew connections between natural phenomena and its impact on humankind.

“Fireball” will also reunite Herzog with “Inferno” producers André Singer and Lucki Stipetić. Werner Herzog Film is producing alongside Spring Films,...

Apple has acquired rights to Fireball, Werner Herzog’s latest documentary feature, which is now part of the Apple Original film slate and will have its global premiere on Apple TV . A date has not yet been set.

Fireball reunites Herzog with Professor Clive Oppenheimer for their third pic together following the 2007’s Oscar-nominated Encounters at the End of the World set in Antarctica and the Emmy-nominated 2016 pic Into the Inferno which explored active volcanoes. The new docu reveals how shooting stars, meteorites and deep impacts have focused the human imagination on other realms and worlds, and on our past and our future.

The pic, first announced in October 2018, hails from Spring Films with the help and support of Sandbox Films. André Singer and Lucki Stipetić are producers. Richard Melman is executive producer.

Fireball now joins fellow Apple Original documentaries including the upcoming Sundance-winning Boys State as well as the already released The Elephant Queen,...

Veteran filmmaker reunites with Professor Clive Oppenheimer.

Apple TV on Friday (July 24) is planning the worldwide launch of Fireball, an original documentary from Werner Herzog.

The veteran filmmaker reunites with Professor Clive Oppenheimer from Encounters At The End Of The World and Into The Inferno on the film.

Fireball explores how shooting stars, meteorites and deep impacts have focused the human imagination on other realms and worlds, and on our past and our future.

The feature is produced by Werner Herzog Film production and Spring Films. André Singer and Lucki Stipetić served as producers and Richard Melman served as executive...

Josh Braun, producer of some of the best documentaries in the world, joins Josh and Joe to discuss the movies that have influenced him throughout his life.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Man On Wire (2008)

The Cove (2009)

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010)

Encounters At The End of the World (2007)

Winnebago Man (2009)

Spellbound (2002)

Supersize Me (2004)

Tell Me Who I Am (2019)

Apollo 11 (2019)

The Edge of Democracy (2019)

Finding Vivian Maier (2013)

Searching For Sugarman (2012)

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (2008)

A History Of Violence (2005)

Frat House (1998)

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘N’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood (2003)

The Exorcist (1973)

Go West (1940)

A Night In Casablanca (1946)

Hello Down There (1974)

What’s Up Doc? (1972)

El Topo (1970)

Pink Flamingos (1972)

Female Trouble (1974)

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

Bambi Meets Godzilla (1969)

Gimme Shelter (1970)

Monterey Pop (1968)

Grey Gardens (1975)

Grey Gardens (2009)

Titicut Follies (1967)

To Have And Have Not (1944)

All About Eve...

Werner Herzog has long had an interest in the interplay between fact and fiction and an individual's personal interpretation of those entities, with films including Cave Of Forgotten Dreams and Encounters At The End Of The World often revealing unexpected truths about the participants that go beyond the surface, while others like the tragic Grizzly Man highlight the folly of allowing belief to triumph over empirical evidence.

All of which means a company like Family Romance LLC - a real-life Japanese firm that specialises in hiring out people to pretend to be family members - is the perfect venture around which Herzog constructs a narrative to explore some of the things that make the modern world tick. Yorgos Lanthimos fans might remember he took on a similar concept with Alps, but Herzog's approach is, unsurprisingly, considerably more ruminative and less downbeat.

Yuichi Ishii is the boss of the film and plays a version of.

The American Society of Cinematographers said Thursday that it will give this year’s Board of Governors Award to Werner Herzog. The prolific writer-director and occasional actor (Disney ’s The Mandalorian) will be honored January 25 at the 34th annual Asc Awards for Outstanding Achievement at Hollywood & Highland’s Ray Dolby Ballroom.

The Asc Board of Governors Award is given to industry stalwarts whose body of work has made significant and indelible contributions to cinema. It is reserved for filmmakers who have been champions for directors of photography and the visual art form.

The German-born Herzog has produced, written, and directed more than 70 feature and documentary films, with Oscar nominations for his documentary Encounters at the End of the World (2009) and an Emmy nom for Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997).

His credits at the vanguard of German cinema along with fellow filmmakers Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Volker Schlöndorff include Aguirre, the Wrath of God...

Legendary director Werner Herzog, one of the founders of the German New Wave, whose films embrace obsessive quests and maddening conflicts with nature, will receive the American Society of Cinematographers’ Board of Governors Award at the 34th annual Asc Awards on January 25 (at Hollywood & Highland’s Ray Dolby Ballroom).

“Werner Herzog is truly a unique storyteller, and we are honored to recognize him for his prolific contributions to cinema,” said Asc President Kees van Oostrum.

Herzog has produced, written, and directed more than 70 feature and documentary films. His volatile, love-hate relationship with actor Klaus Kinski resulted in such powerful films as “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” “Fitzcarraldo,” “Nosferatu the Vampyre,” and “Woyzeck.” Other masterpieces include “Stroszek” and “The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser,” both starring street musician-turned actor Bruno S.

Herzog received an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature for “Encounters at the End of the World,” while “Little Dieter Needs to Fly...

For those raised on a diet of hot dogs and hamburgers, think back to the first time you ever heard of sushi, and the idea of eating raw fish. Werner Herzog’s “Family Romance, LLC” extends a comparably otherizing attitude to Japan’s niche rent-a-relative phenomenon, exposing for Western eyes a peculiar Tokyo-based company that caters to fulfilling nonsexual but undeniably intimate fantasies for its clientele. Weird? Yes, but so is the way Americans convince their kids to climb into the laps of white-bearded strangers in Santa costumes.

Homo sapiens are a strange species, and few capture that more satisfyingly than Herzog, even if this is clearly one of his minor works. Not quite 90 minutes, the film might actually be more effective at half the length. As is, it feels padded with slow-motion footage, long shots in which characters stare out in wordless contemplation, and an awkward dream sequence involving a gang of swordless samurai.

Film Bridge International has entered into a two-picture production deal with Dublin-based Merlin Films headed by Kieran Corrigan and Deliverance director, John Boorman. Film Bridge founder and CEO Ellen Wander will partner with Corrigan and Boorman to produce two features, heist thriller Underground and gritty action thriller Assassins Club. Boorman, whose latest work as director was 2015’s Queen & Country, will helm the former with Stephen Saint Leger (Vikings) on the latter. Worldwide sales will be handled by Wander in Cannes. Underground is set in Boston where an Irish mob family is struggling to get out of the business, but is tempted by the discovery of an abandoned tunnel beneath Tiffany & Co. Assassins Club centers on a man offered a contract to kill seven people from around the globe. The targets, in turn, are also assassins with contracts to kill him. The only way out is to leave a...

Acclaimed German director Werner Herzog will be honored with a lifetime achievement honor by the European Film Academy.

The director of Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972), Fitzcarraldo (1982) and Grizzly Man (2005) will receive the lifetime honor at the 32nd European Film Awards on Dec. 7 in Berlin.

Herzog has written, produced and directed more than 70 feature and documentary films and has collected a trophy case of awards, including a Berlinale Silver Bear for his 1968 debut Signs of Life, a best director honor in Cannes for Fitzcarraldo and an Oscar nomination for the 2007 documentary Encounters at the End of the World.

Surprisingly, he ...

Acclaimed German director Werner Herzog will be honored with a lifetime achievement honor by the European Film Academy.

The director of Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972), Fitzcarraldo (1982) and Grizzly Man (2005) will receive the lifetime honor at the 32nd European Film Awards on Dec. 7 in Berlin.

Herzog has written, produced and directed more than 70 feature and documentary films and has collected a trophy case of awards, including a Berlinale Silver Bear for his 1968 debut Signs of Life, a best director honor in Cannes for Fitzcarraldo and an Oscar nomination for the 2007 documentary Encounters at the End of the World.

Surprisingly, he ...

The following remembrance was written by Deborah Davis, Mark Urman’s wife.

From Anatole Litvak’s “Anastasia,” the first movie he saw as a child at a picture palace in the Bronx, to Bradley Cooper’s “A Star Is Born” (his choice for this year’s Best Picture), Mark Urman was a man with a boundless passion for cinema. In the course of his nearly 50 years in film, Mark felt blessed to work with some of the greatest luminaries in the business, from Joseph Losey, David Lean, and Bernardo Bertolucci to Roman Polanski, Sydney Lumet, and Julian Schnabel.

He also delighted in encouraging talents as they emerged, including Ryan Gosling, Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, Lynette Howell, Jamie Patricof, Christian Bale, Liv Tyler, Marc Forster, Natasha Richardson, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Kevin Smith, Cary Fukunaga, Lee Daniels, and Bill Condon.

Mark was born in the Bronx on November 24, 1952, the...

Werner Herzog never really stops working. The German auteur has been making the festival rounds with “Meeting Gorbachev,” his feature-length sit-down with the former Soviet politician that the filmmaker co-directed with André Singer. But by the time the movie premiered at Telluride over Labor Day weekend ahead of its screenings in Toronto, Herzog had already wrapped production on two new projects, and he has a big acting gig on the horizon.

At Tiff, the director told IndieWire that he would soon act in “a big franchise film, about which I’m not supposed to say anything,” he said. “I can only say the title. The code name is ‘Huckleberry.’” He chuckled. “For god’s sake, that’s only a cover,” he said.

Herzog declined to offer further details, but the role would mark the first time he has appeared in a studio production since 2012’s Tom Cruise action vehicle “Jack Reacher,...

Ashok Amritraj’s Hyde Park Entertainment Group has acquired the rights to Greg Grandin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Fordlandia to develop as a potential television series, with acclaimed filmmaker Werner Herzog attached to direct. Oscar-nominated Christopher Wilkinson is writing the series adaptation and will executive produce.

Fordlandia tells the extraordinary true story of the richest man in the world in the 1920s, Henry Ford, and his attempt to recreate small-town America deep in the heart of the Amazon. Amritraj and Herzog are also serving as executive producers, with Addison Mehr and Priya Amritraj co-producing the project. Grandin’s book was published by Macmillan in 2009.

“Fordlandia is an incredible true story and we are thrilled to be working with Werner, one of the world’s most iconic filmmakers, and Chris, a truly exceptional writer,” Amritraj said. “The story of a tycoon with absolute power imposing his vision...

Original Productions has hired veteran executive Jeff Hasler as president of the prolific unscripted TV production company owned by FremantleMedia. Hasler will oversee all development, production, business and strategic aspects of the company along with Ernie Avila, COO and Evp, Business Affairs and Sarah Whalen, Evp Development and Programming. Avila and Whalen, who have been running Original Prods. in the past couple of years, will now report into Hasler.

Hasler joins Original Productions from National Geographic Studios where he served as Evp of production and development, overseeing original non-scripted television, feature documentary and other projects including the acclaimed documentary Jane, directed by Brett Morgen, as well as the Emmy-nominated series StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson, Explorer, series Chain of Command, documentary Gender Revolution with Katie Couric, and the recently Sports Emmy-nominated Breaking 2.

Previously, Hasler also spent nearly five years as Svp of Development and Production for Discovery Channel, managing all programming for the broadcaster,...

“Jane,” Brett Morgen’s popular documentary about primatologist Jane Goodall, was so lauded and applauded that most Oscar experts predicted that it would land an Oscar nomination, if not win. Instead, it never made the cut.

This happens with the Academy documentary branch. While its voter ranks have expanded by more than 50 percent in the last three years, from 204 to 320 members, it’s still a relatively insular group with strong ideas about what makes a great documentary. They tend to be slow to recognize innovation. They long frowned on dramatic re-enactments, strong personalities, and rousing scores, overlooking early Michael Moore entry “Roger and Me” and Errol Morris’ “The Thin Blue Line,” finally rewarding them with Oscars for anti-gun screed “Bowling for Columbine” and the Robert McNamara profile “The Fog of War,” respectively.

Moore returned to the Oscar fray for “Sicko,” but Morris was never nominated again. The doc branch nominated...

“Jane,” Brett Morgen’s popular documentary about primatologist Jane Goodall, was so lauded and applauded that most Oscar experts predicted that it would land an Oscar nomination, if not win. Instead, it never made the cut.

This happens with the Academy documentary branch. While its voter ranks have expanded by more than 50 percent in the last three years, from 204 to 320 members, it’s still a relatively insular group with strong ideas about what makes a great documentary. They tend to be slow to recognize innovation. They long frowned on dramatic re-enactments, strong personalities, and rousing scores, overlooking early Michael Moore entry “Roger and Me” and Errol Morris’ “The Thin Blue Line,” finally rewarding them with Oscars for anti-gun screed “Bowling for Columbine” and the Robert McNamara profile “The Fog of War,” respectively.

Read More:Is Errol Morris’s ‘Wormwood’ a Documentary? Netflix Says Yes, Oscars Say No

Moore returned to the Oscar fray for “Sicko,...

Last week, in response to the news that Netflix had finally cracked the Cannes competition lineup (a breakthrough that inspired the Federation of French Cinemas to question if a movie that skips theaters should even be considered “a cinematographic work”), I wrote about the streaming giant and how they’ve performed as a distributor. My conclusions were, uh, not super favorable. Criticizing the company’s penchant for pricing out the competition, hoarding the hottest indies on the festival circuit, and burying them on their site without the benefit of a proper release, I argued that Netflix isn’t a distributor so much as “a graveyard with unlimited viewing hours,” and that “it doesn’t release movies, it inters them.” It’s a problem that extends to the well-funded features that Netflix produces themselves, a problem that’s only going to get worse as those titles continue to get better.

See MoreNetflix Keeps Buying Great Movies,...

So, going into the final stretch before the Oscars are announced, I have a question: if you like—no, love this year’s front-running La La Land, does that make you a bad person, or just deluded? Don’t laugh—there may be people at your own Oscar party who will have already come to their own conclusion on that conundrum. This year’s presumptive favorite is so presumptive that people are talking about the film as if it had already won and are projecting as to whether it’s an enduring classic or just another meh-fest to be thrown on the mediocrity pile along with Crash, Chicago, Argo, The Artist and about half of the rest of Oscar’s Best Picture winners since the Academy started handing out awards at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in 1929. It is hard to deny, no matter how much you like or dislike La La Land,...

Werner Herzog’s latest documentary which surveys the world’s most dangerous and active volcanoes, Into the Inferno, is unsurprisingly not about volcanoes. Despite privileged access to one-of-a-kind sites and the researchers who work on them, Herzog has little concern for info-doc subject matter. While another filmmaker might take the opportunity to discuss climate change or how unprepared we are for catastrophe, Herzog is only after one truth, the thing hidden by data, ideology and his own myth: the cosmic indifference of nature, the universe in all of its nihilistic purposelessness.Clashes between nature and subject, and The Real and The Symbolic have been the thematic through-line of Herzog’s distinctive oeuvre: the grizzly bears and Timothy Treadwell’s perception, the jungle and Fitzcarraldo’s exotic dreams, the Amazon River and Aguirre’s doomed quest. There is a clear line between the indifferent filmic environment and the assumptions of the characters and filmmaker,...

Many are called, few are chosen: The number of high-quality, awards-worthy documentaries seems to grow every year, but there’s still only 15 slots on the Oscar documentary shortlist. That will be announced December 5; the final five will be revealed on nominations morning, January 24. This year, 145 features were submitted.

This is the white-knuckle portion of the final campaign stretch, as documentary filmmakers and distributors hope their movies make it onto documentary branch voters’ viewing piles before they file their final grades. Those with the advantage are high-profile established hits and festival award-winners with the right combination of engaging accessibility, artful filmmaking, and gravitas.

So what’s looking like a strong bet? It’s a diverse list in more ways than one. Here are my picks for the Top 15, which are not listed in order of likelihood.

See more ‘Amanda Knox’: Why It Took Five Years to Unravel the Story of...

Many are called, few are chosen: The number of high-quality, awards-worthy documentaries seems to grow every year, but there’s still only 15 slots on the Oscar documentary shortlist. That will be announced December 5; the final five will be revealed on nominations morning, January 24. This year, 145 features were submitted.

This is the white-knuckle portion of the final campaign stretch, as documentary filmmakers and distributors hope their movies make it onto documentary branch voters’ viewing piles before they file their final grades. Those with the advantage are high-profile established hits and festival award-winners with the right combination of engaging accessibility, artful filmmaking, and gravitas.

So what’s looking like a strong bet? It’s a diverse list in more ways than one. Here are my picks for the Top 15, which are not listed in order of likelihood.

See more ‘Amanda Knox’: Why It Took Five Years to Unravel the Story of...

Director Werner Herzog doesn’t make cinéma vérité documentaries, nor does he conduct journalistic interviews. He likes to fiddle with the truth in films such as 1982’s ”Fitzcarraldo,” about an obsessed opera lover. In his 1999 manifesto, ”Minnesota Declaration,” Herzog wrote: ”There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.”

Through the decades Herzog has toyed with his public persona as a fearless, death-defying, slightly crazed filmmaker who was rumored to have pulled a gun on leading man Klaus Kinski on the 1972 jungle set of ”Aguirre, the Wrath of God.” His own German-accented voiceover narration has become famous in its own right, and he was comfortable enough as an actor to make fun of himself in Zak Penn’s improvised 2004 mockumentary “Incident at Loch Ness,” among...

Director Werner Herzog doesn’t make cinéma vérité documentaries, nor does he conduct journalistic interviews. He likes to fiddle with the truth in films such as 1982’s ”Fitzcarraldo,” about an obsessed opera lover. In his 1999 manifesto, ”Minnesota Declaration,” Herzog wrote: ”There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.”

Through the decades Herzog has toyed with his public persona as a fearless, death-defying, slightly crazed filmmaker who was rumored to have pulled a gun on leading man Klaus Kinski on the 1972 jungle set of ”Aguirre, the Wrath of God.” His own German-accented voiceover narration has become famous in its own right, and he was comfortable enough as an actor to make fun of himself in Zak Penn’s improvised 2004 mockumentary “Incident at Loch Ness,” among...

Internet luddite Werner Herzog offers a sporadically fascinating glimpse of a vast and complex subject

The entire scope of the digital age – from the birth of the internet, to artificial intelligence, to catastrophist predictions of the end of days – is crammed into 96 idiosyncratic minutes in this latest documentary by Werner Herzog. And while Herzog’s defiantly esoteric line of commentary works with some subjects – suicidal penguins, for example, in Encounters at the End of the World – he does seem out of his depth at times while navigating this vast and complex subject. Herzog’s Usp here is that, as a luddite who doesn’t even carry a mobile phone, he is essentially a technological tourist, an outsider looking into the digital world. It’s a sporadically fascinating film that dips its toe into many different themes where perhaps it should have chosen to immerse itself in just one or two.

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.

Complete Unknown (Joshua Marston)

Armed with two top-notch leads and a compelling premise, Joshua Marston‘s third feature, Complete Unknown, spends a lot of time hinting at which direction it will go, without going anywhere at all. Tom (Michael Shannon) is living with his wife Rehema (Azita Ghanizada) in New York City, spending the majority of his days drafting agricultural policy emails in a cramped government office. It is...

Much like Whit Stillman adapting Jane Austen earlier this year, Into The Inferno—a documentary about volcanoes directed by Werner Herzog—seems like such a no-brainer that it’s hard to believe it didn’t already exist. Actually, this one did already exist, albeit in shorter forms: Herzog’s short doc “La Soufrière” (1977) saw him rush to the evacuated Caribbean island of Guadeloupe in order to record an impending volcanic eruption, and his 2007 feature Encounters At The End Of The World introduced him to volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer, who worked so extensively on Into The Inferno that he and Herzog share its opening “a film by” credit (though only Herzog is credited as its director). Footage from both of those films gets recycled here, which contributes to a general feeling of déjà vu that’s increasingly common in Herzog’s movies. He seems very much aware that he’s ...

Mysterious, best left alone, of an ominous origin, and seemingly ready to burst at any moment — let’s just get this out of the way and say that, yes, Werner Herzog‘s dramatic interests and volcanoes are a match made in heaven. The master’s latest documentary, his third feature this year, and the second 2016 endeavor about volcanoes is Into the Inferno, a study of civilizations living under the specter of eruption. The picture made a nice impression at Tiff just last month, and there’s no need for a wait: Netflix will be bringing it to our home in merely eleven days. Rarely has “Netflix and chill” seemed less fitting a statement.

But it’s worth the investment, viewer- and company-wise. As we said in our review from this year’s Tiff, “Herzog is far more likely to be impressed by human eccentricity than grandiosity – like the enthusiasm of a particularly bubbly archaeologist,...

Acclaimed auteur Werner Herzog takes viewers into the red-hot magma-filled craters of some of the world’s most active and astonishing volcanoes in his new documentary “Into the Inferno.”

Accompanied by volcanologist and co-director Clive Oppenheimer (who he met ten years ago while filming “Encounters at the End of the World”), the duo take an unforgettable journey across the globe, from Antarctica, to the hottest desert in the world in Ethiopia, to Iceland, and even to the generally inaccessible center of North Korea, to visit some of the world’s most scared volcanoes. A new visually stunning trailer and poster have just been released by Netflix. Check them out below.

Read More: Werner Herzog’s ‘Into The Inferno’ Is A Red Hot Return To Form — Telluride Film Festival Review

“Volcanoes could not care less about what we are doing up here,” Herzog says in the trailer, and with that offers...