Films

1961: HERAKLES

Short. A bodybuilder is confronted with the deeds of the mythic Heracles.

1964: GAME IN THE SAND

Short. Never released.

1966: THE UNPRECEDENTED DEFENCE OF THE FORTRESS DEUTSCHKREUTZ

Short. The absurd defense of a fortress against a nonexistent enemy.

1967: LAST WORDS

Short. The last inhabitant of a lepers’ colony is forcibly returned to civilization. He refuses to speak.

1968: SIGNS OF LIFE

Feature. A German soldier wounded in the Second World War becomes deranged and bombards friend and foe with fireworks.

1969: PRECAUTIONS AGAINST FANATICS

Short. A pensioner feels compelled to protect racehorses against fanatics.

1969: THE FLYING DOCTORS OF EAST AFRICA

Documentary. Doctors bring medical assistance to remote places in East Africa.

1970: EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL

Feature. A rebellion of little people causes devastation in a penal colony.

1970: FATA MORGANA

Uncategorizable. Poetic requiem for a planet that dissolves into mirages.

1971: HANDICAPPED FUTURE

Documentary. The dreams of severely handicapped children.

1971: LAND OF SILENCE AND DARKNESS

Documentary. The world of the deaf and blind Fini Straubinger, who looks after other deaf and blind people.

1972: AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD

Feature. Lope de Aguirre leads a band of Spanish conquistadors who disappear without a trace in the Amazon jungle while looking for the fabled El Dorado. A story of power and madness.

1973: THE GREAT ECSTASY OF WOODCARVER STEINER

Documentary. The young woodcarver Walter Steiner is such an outstanding ski jumper that he all but flies to his death at the world championships in Planica. A film about ecstasy and death.

1974: THE ENIGMA OF KASPAR HAUSER A.K.A. EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF AND GOD AGAINST ALL

Feature. The foundling Kaspar Hauser is put out in Nuremberg. He has no knowledge of the world, language, other human beings. The tragic murder of a unique historical figure.

1976: HEART OF GLASS

Feature. The eighteenth-century shepherd Mühlhiasl sees visions of the end of the world. Villagers sleepwalk to their foretold doom. All the characters acted under hypnosis.

1976: NO ONE WILL PLAY WITH ME

Short. A lonely boy and his speaking raven.

1976: HOW MUCH WOOD WOULD A WOODCHUCK CHUCK

Documentary. The world championship of livestock auctioneers in Pennsylvania. On the limits of language, the last poetry of capitalism.

1976: STROSZEK

Feature. On his release from prison, Stroszek dreams of a new life in America. He sets off for Wisconsin with the prostitute Eva and an old man. A ballad.

1977: LA SOUFRIÈRE

Documentary. The wait for the coming volcanic eruption. Only one poor peasant refuses to be evacuated.

1979: NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE

Feature. Count Dracula is on his way to Wismar with ten thousand rats. The love of a woman is enough to destroy him.

1979: WOYZECK

Feature. After Büchner’s play. In a fit of madness, the poor maltreated Woyzeck murders his beloved.

1980: GOD’S ANGRY MAN

Documentary. The TV evangelist Dr. Gene Scott threatens to take his station off the air unless he receives a certain sum of money from his flock in minutes.

1980: HUIE’S SERMON

Documentary. In front of his congregation, Bishop Huie Rogers preaches and rocks himself into a religious frenzy.

1982: FITZCARRALDO

Feature. Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald dreams of grand opera in the jungle. To exploit an otherwise inaccessible rubber-growing area, he has hundreds of Indigenous people haul a large steamship over a mountain.

1984: WHERE THE GREEN ANTS DREAM

Feature. Australian Aboriginal peoples try to save the sacred place of the green ants from the bulldozers of a mining company.

1984/1985: BALLAD OF THE LITTLE SOLDIER

Documentary. With child soldiers in the war zone between Honduras and Nicaragua.

1985: THE DARK GLOW OF THE MOUNTAINS

Documentary. The mountaineers Reinhold Messner and Hans Kammerlander scale Gasherbrum I and II, two eight-thousand-meter peaks in the Karakoram Range.

1987: COBRA VERDE

Feature. The Brazilian outlaw Manoel da Silva becomes the viceroy of Dahomey in West Africa. Based on the novel by Bruce Chatwin.

1988: LES GALOIS

Short. France, as seen by various directors. Part of the series Les Français Vus Par. . . .

1989: HERDSMEN OF THE SUN

Documentary. Tribal meeting of the Wodaabe nomads in the southern Sahara. Women make their choice of the most beautiful young man.

1990: ECHOES FROM A SOMBRE EMPIRE

Documentary. General Jean-Bédel Bokassa has himself crowned emperor of the Central African Republic in a ceremony aping Napoleon’s coronation.

1991: SCREAM OF STONE

Feature. Two mountaineers drive each other to death in a race to climb the most difficult peak in the world, Cerro Torre in Patagonia.

1991: JAG MANDIR: THE ECCENTRIC PRIVATE THEATRE OF THE MAHARAJA OF UDAIPUR

Documentary. The Austrian artist André Heller brings together the best magicians, dancers, and snake charmers of India for one great performance.

1991: FILMSTUNDE (1–4)

Four documentaries. Filmed during the Viennale in Vienna in a variety tent with guests.

1992: LESSONS OF DARKNESS

Documentary. An apocalyptic vision of our planet after Iraqi forces set fire to all the oil wells of Kuwait.

1993: BELLS FROM THE DEEP

Documentary. Faith and superstition in Russia. The lost city of Kitezh, where the drowned faithful ring the bells.

1994: THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE WORLD INTO MUSIC

Documentary. Filmed behind the scenes at the Wagner festival in Bayreuth.

1995: GESUALDO: DEATH FOR FIVE VOICES

Documentary. Ahead of his time, Carlo Gesualdo, the Prince of Venosa, composes music four centuries ago that deeply influenced Stravinsky.

1997: LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY

Documentary. All Dieter Dengler wants to do is fly, but this lands him in the Vietnam War. He is the only American who successfully escaped Pathet Lao captivity in Laos.

1999: MY BEST FIEND

Documentary. Years after Klaus Kinski’s death, the author makes a film about their explosive collaboration over five films.

1999: THE LORD AND THE LADEN

Documentary. In Guatemala, the Mayas venerate a divinity clad like a wealthy ranchero.

2000: WINGS OF HOPE

Documentary. Juliane Koepcke is the sole survivor of a plane crash in the Peruvian jungle, which the author himself avoided only by a series of coincidences.

2001: PILGRIMAGE

Documentary. Believers in agony and ecstasy before the Holy Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico.

2001: INVINCIBLE

Feature. A Polish-Jewish blacksmith’s apprentice is celebrated as the strongest man in the world in Berlin variety shows—to the displeasure of the Nazis. His family refuses to listen to his warnings of the impending danger.

2002: TEN THOUSAND YEARS OLDER

Documentary. Within the space of a few minutes, the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau tribe is thrust ten thousand years into the future with their first encounter with civilization.

2003: WHEEL OF TIME

Documentary. The Dalai Lama calls the Buddhist faithful to a ceremony in India. Half a million pilgrims follow his summons.

2004: THE WHITE DIAMOND

Documentary. Following a tragic accident with the maiden flight of his first airship, Graham Dorrington tests out a new prototype over the Guyana jungle.

2005: GRIZZLY MAN

Documentary. Timothy Treadwell tries to protect Alaska’s bears from poachers. A tragic misunderstanding of savage nature costs him and his girlfriend their lives. Both are killed by grizzlies.

2005: THE WILD BLUE YONDER

Feature. A stranded extraterrestrial being winds up on Earth as a failure. He pines for his home planet.

2006: RESCUE DAWN

Feature. Growing up in postwar Germany, Dieter Dengler experiences a freakish fate as a prisoner of the Pathet Lao. He barely escapes through the jungle alive.

2007: ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD

Documentary. Dreamers and scientists meet in the Antarctic. An ode to a continent and its brief inhabitants.

2009: BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS

Feature. New Orleans, ravaged by corruption, drugs, and a hurricane, is the ideal setting for a homicide detective. A story on the bliss of evil.

2009: LA BOHÈME

Short. Made in Africa for the opening of the London opera season with La Bohème.

2009: MY SON, MY SON, WHAT HAVE YE DONE

Feature. A gifted young actor goes mad during rehearsals for Orestes. He can no longer distinguish between play and reality, and murders his own mother with a stage prop, a Turkish saber.

2010: CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS

Documentary. Filmed in the recently discovered Chauvet Cave. The wall paintings there, made some thirty thousand years ago, are extremely well-preserved and fascinatingly modern.

2010: HAPPY PEOPLE: A YEAR IN THE TAIGA

Documentary. A newly created film from Dmitry Vasyukov’s four-hour epic on fur hunters in the Siberian taiga.

2011: ODE TO THE DAWN OF MAN

Short. The Dutch cellist Ernst Reijseger enters another world as he plays.

2011: INTO THE ABYSS: A TALE OF DEATH, A TALE OF LIFE

Documentary. Michael Perry on death row in Texas a week before his execution. On a crime of stupefying nihilism.

2012/2013: ON DEATH ROW

Eight documentaries on human abysses. Filmed in death row prisons in Florida and Texas.

2013: FROM ONE SECOND TO THE NEXT

Documentary. Tragedies when drivers text while driving.

2015: QUEEN OF THE DESERT

Feature. The writer and archaeologist Gertrude Bell is largely responsible for the political shape of the Near East following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

2016: LO AND BEHOLD: REVERIES OF THE CONNECTED WORLD

Documentary. The internet from its early beginnings to its current excesses.

2016: SALT AND FIRE

Feature. A female biologist is kidnapped and left alone in a salt flat with two blind boys.

2016: INTO THE INFERNO

Documentary. Around the world with the volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer. Spectacular footage of erupting volcanoes and their effect on human civilization.

2018: MEETING GORBACHEV

Documentary. With André Singer. The life and politics of the last Soviet president in conversation with the author.

2019: FAMILY ROMANCE, LLC

Feature. In Japanese. An agency actor plays the part of the father to an eleven-year-old girl who has been seeking one.

2019: NOMAD: IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF BRUCE CHATWIN

Documentary. Encounters with the great British writer from the point of view of the author.

2020: FIREBALL: VISITORS FROM DARKER WORLDS

Documentary. Around the world with Clive Oppenheimer to see great meteor impacts. Their effect on life and civilization.

2021: THEATER OF THOUGHT

Documentary. Scientists work to solve the deepest riddles of the brain, human thought, and illusions.

2022: THE FIRE WITHIN: REQUIEM FOR KATIA AND MAURICE KRAFFT

Resists classification. Requiem for the French volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft. Their apocalyptic visions and early deaths while filming a volcanic eruption in Japan.