The best Werner Herzog’s documentary movies
We present our ranking of the best Werner Herzog’s movies. Do you love cinema? Or are you looking for a movie of your favorite actor to watch tonight? Surely you have some to see or that you did not know yet about Werner Herzog.
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
7.4/10
Werner Herzog gains exclusive access to film inside the Chauvet caves of Southern France, capturing the oldest known pictorial creations of humankind in their astonishing natural setting.
Life Itself
7.8/10
The surprising and entertaining life of renowned film critic and social commentator Roger Ebert (1942-2013): his early days as a freewheeling bachelor and Pulitzer Prize winner, his famously contentious partnership with Gene Siskel, his life-altering marriage, and his brave and transcendent battle with cancer.
Tokyo-Ga
7.3/10
German director Wim Wenders made this documentary in which he tries to explore the Tokyo that was depicted in the films of Yasujiro Ozu. When Wenders visits Tokyo for the first time, he finds a very different city, one with a booming fascination with technology that often clashes with the traditional elements of Japanese culture. Wenders also interviews Ozu's cinematographer, Yuharu Atsuta, and Chishu Ryu, an actor who frequently collaborated with Ozu.
The Unbelievers
6.9/10
Scientists Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss travel the globe promoting a scientific worldview and the rational questioning of religious belief.
Grizzly Man
7.8/10
Werner Herzog's documentary film about the "Grizzly Man" Timothy Treadwell and what the thirteen summers in a National Park in Alaska were like in one man's attempt to protect the grizzly bears. The film is full of unique images and a look into the spirit of a man who sacrificed himself for nature.
Meeting Gorbachev
7.2/10
Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union, sits down with filmmaker Werner Herzog to discuss his many achievements. Topics include the talks to reduce nuclear weapons, the reunification of Germany and the dissolution of his country.
Happy People: A Year in the Taiga
7.7/10
In the center of the story is the life of the indigenous people of the village Bakhtia at the river Yenisei in the Siberian Taiga. The camera follows the protagonists in the village over a period of a year. The natives, whose daily routines have barely changed over the last centuries, keep living their lives according to their own cultural traditions.
Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds
7/10
This remarkable journey across our planet and universe explores how meteorites, shooting stars, and deep impacts have awoken our wonder about other realms—and make us rethink our destinies.
Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World
7/10
Werner Herzog's exploration of the Internet and the connected world.
Room 666
6.6/10
During the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, Wenders asks a number of global film directors to, one at a time, go into a hotel room, turn on the camera and answer a simple question: "What is the future of cinema?"
Burden of Dreams
7.9/10
The Amazon rain forest, 1979. The crew of Fitzcarraldo (1982), a film directed by German director Werner Herzog, soon finds itself with problems related to casting, tribal struggles and accidents, among many other setbacks; but nothing compared to dragging a huge steamboat up a mountain, while Herzog embraces the path of a certain madness to make his vision come true.
Into the Inferno
7.2/10
With stunning views of eruptions and lava flows, Werner Herzog captures the raw power of volcanoes and their ties to indigenous spiritual practices.
Ballad of a Righteous Merchant
6.1/10
Chronicles the making of director Werner Herzog’s 2009 feature, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, providing profound insight into the director and his craft. My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done was inspired by the true story of an actor who committed in reality the crime he was supposed to enact on stage: murdering his mother. With longtime friend Herbert Golder behind the lens, Herzog reveals the privacy and deep solitude that defines the director and his art.
Into the Abyss
7.3/10
We do not know when and how we will die. Death Row inmates do. Werner Herzog embarks on a dialogue with Death Row inmates, asks questions about life and death and looks deep into these individuals, their stories, their crimes.
My Best Fiend
7.8/10
A film that describes the love-hate relationship between Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski, the deep trust between the director and the actor, and their independently and simultaneously hatched plans to murder one another.
Encounters at the End of the World
7.7/10
Herzog and cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger go to Antarctica to meet people who live and work there, and to capture footage of the continent's unique locations. Herzog's voiceover narration explains that his film will not be a typical Antarctica film about "fluffy penguins", but will explore the dreams of the people and the landscape.
The Great Buster: A Celebration
7.5/10
A celebration of the life and career of one of America's most influential and celebrated filmmakers and comedians—Buster Keaton—whose singular style and fertile output during the silent era created his legacy as a true cinematic visionary.
Lessons of Darkness
8/10
This film shows the disaster of the Kuwaitian oil fields in flames. In contrast to the common documentary film there are no comments and few interviews. What must have been the hell itself is presented to the viewer in such beautiful sights and beautiful music that one has to be fascinated by it.
The White Diamond
7.5/10
This 2004 documentary by Werner Herzog diaries the struggle of a passionate English inventor to design and test a unique airship during its maiden flight above the jungle canopy.
The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner
7.6/10
A study of the psychology of a champion ski-flyer, whose full-time occupation is carpentry.
