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National Geographic Documentary Films has acquired the U.S. streaming rights to Werner Herzog’s new feature-length documentary Ghost Elephants, which had its world premiere at the Venice film festival on Wednesday. The doc will go out on Disney+ and Hulu in the U.S..

Herzog wrote, directed and narrates the documentary, in which he follows conservation biologist Steve Boyes, in his search to prove the existence of the mysterious, perhaps mythical, herd of ghost elephants in the highlands of Angola.

“After meeting Steve Boyes, an unexpected project that felt like the hunt for Moby Dick, the White Whale, came at me with great urgency,” Herzog said in a statement. “Like many of my films, this is an exploration of dreams, of imagination — weighed against reality. The film took me to what the local tribesmen call the Land at the End of the Earth.”

Herzog has built much of his career around portraits of obsessive,...

The Venice Film Festival opened Wednesday with Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia, preceded by a Lifetime Achievement Award for Werner Herzog accompanied by a tribute speech for the German filmmaker from from Francis Coppola.

Sorrentino’s 11th feature, La Grazia reunites the Italian director with longtime collaborator Toni Servillo, star of his 2014 Oscar-winning movie La Grande Bellezza.

The film, the storyline of which was kept under wraps until the world premiere, stars Servillo as a respected Italian president facing three key decisions – around an euthanasia bill and pardons for convicted killers – as his term in power comes to end.

Read Deadline’s review of the movie here.

“It’s a love story about family, law, high politics and taking responsibility,” Sorrentino told commentators on the red carpet as he entered the Palazzo del Cinema tonight.

Prior to the screening, Herzog received the festival’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement from Coppola.

The 2025 edition of the world’s oldest film festival kicked off with a poignant moment of movie history Wednesday night as American film legend Francis Ford Coppola took the stage inside Venice’s Sala Grande cinema to present German uber-auteur Werner Herzog with an honorary Golden Lion, the event’s highest honor for lifetime achievement.

The two cinema legends — Coppola is also a Venice film festival Golden Lion honoree from 1992 — adorably walked hand in hand down the red carpet to the openingnight ceremony.

Herzog’s moment in the Venice spotlight got underway with a video tribute to his gloriously eccentric filmography, spanning Fitzcarraldo; Grizzly Man; Aguirre, the Wrath of God; My Best Fiend; and so many more.

Presenting him with his statue, Coppola said he “came here to praise Werner Herzog, and it’s not enough to praise Werner Herzog. One must celebrate the fact that someone like him can actually exist.

Japanese chirashi for La chimera. Designer unknown.Totting up the most-liked posters on my Movie Poster of the Day Instagram over the first six months of 2025, the surprise winner, with over 4,000 likes on one day, was a Japanese chirashi for Alice Rohrwacher's La chimera (2023). I put its popularity down to the Josh O’Connor fan base, or for the film itself, though it is a lovely, colorful design. The second and third places, with over a couple thousand likes each, went to two designs that I posted in tribute to David Lynch upon his passing in January: the original poster for Eraserhead (1977) and a beautiful Japanese poster for The Straight Story (1999). There are actually three Japanese posters in the top four, number three being a zippy design for Charade (1963), which I posted in April in celebration of what would have been its director Stanley Donen’s 101st birthday. And the one-sheet...

Werner Herzog will receive the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival this August.

“I feel deeply honored to receive a Lifetime Achievement Honorary Golden Lion by the Venice Biennale. I have always tried to be a Good Soldier of Cinema, and this feels like a medal for my work. Thank you,” the director said in a Tuesday statement. “However, I have not gone into retirement. I work as always. A few weeks ago, I just finished a documentary in Africa, ‘Ghost Elephants,’ and at this moment, I am shooting my next feature film, ‘Bucking Fastard,’ in Ireland. I am developing an animated film, based on my novel, ‘The Twilight World,’ and I am acting the voice of a creature in Bong Joon-ho’s upcoming animated film. I am not done yet.”

The La Biennale board of directors selected Herzog upon the recommendation from Vff artistic director Alberto Barbera.

German director Werner Herzog will be honored with a Golden Lion lifetime achievement award at this year’s Venice Film Festival. The Fitzcarraldo and Grizzly Man director will be honored at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival, which runs Aug. 27-Sept. 6.

“I feel deeply honored to receive a Lifetime Achievement Honorary Golden Lion by the Venice Biennale. I have always tried to be a Good Soldier of Cinema, and this feels like a medal for my work,” Herzog stated. “However, I have not gone into retirement. I work as always.”

The director, whose long list of credits as a director includes Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Signs of Life, Bad Lieutenant, Port of Call: New Orleans, Nosferatu the Vampyre, and Cave of Forgotten Dreams, and as an actor turns in Jack Reacher and Disney+’s The Mandalorian, recently completed a new documentary, Ghost Elephants, is currently shooting a feature, Bucking Fastard,...

German filmmaker Werner Herzog will receive the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the 82nd Venice Film Festival (August 27-September 6).

The director has screened several films at the festival including 2009’s Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans.

Of receiving the award, Herzog said: “I have always tried to be a Good Soldier of Cinema, and this feels like a medal for my work. Thank you.

“However, I have not gone into retirement. I work as always. A few weeks ago, I just finished a documentary in Africa, Ghost Elephants, and at this moment, I am shooting my next feature film,...

The Venice Film Festival will fete German filmmaker Werner Herzog with its honorary Golden Lion at its forthcoming 82nd edition.

Accepting the honor, Herzog said: “I feel deeply honored to receive a Lifetime Achievement Honorary Golden Lion by the Venice Biennale. I have always tried to be a Good Soldier of Cinema, and this feels like a medal for my work. Thank you.”

The filmmaker, often known for his biting humor, added: “However, I have not gone into retirement. I work as always. A few weeks ago, I just finished a documentary in Africa, Ghost Elephants, and at this moment, I am shooting my next feature film, Bucking Fastard, in Ireland. I am developing an animated film, based on my novel, The Twilight World, and I am acting the voice of a creature in Bong Joon Ho’s upcoming animated film. I am not done yet.”

Born in Munich in...

Werner Herzog confirms the extreme lengths he went to in order to afford operations on the set of Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Herzog's 1972 jungle adventure film tells the story of a ruthless and ambitious explorer named Don Lope de Aguirre (Klaus Kinski) who leads Spain on a search for El Dorado. In addition to Kinski, the movie featured a leading cast including Ruy Guerra, Helena Rojo, Del Negro, Peter Berling, and Cecilia Rivera.Though Aguirre, the Wrath of God is regarded as one of Herzog's most important films, the on-set experience was not without its problems.

Speaking with 60 Minutes, Herzog elaborates on his fraught experience on the Aguirre, the Wrath of God set. Interviewer Anderson Cooper discusses that he had heard the director "sold [his] shoes in order to get some fish to feed the crew." Herzog confirms this to be true, and notes that he would trade things...

Werner Herzog has confirmed he is working on an animated feature adaptation of his 2021 novel The Twilight World about real-life Japanese solider Hiroo Onoda who refused to surrender for some 30 years after the end of WW2.

The German writer, producer and filmmaker is collaborating on the project with New York, L.A. and Berlin-based animation studio Psyop, in partnership with Danish-French company Sun Creature Studio, producers of the Bafta and triple Oscar-nominated film Flee.

It marks a first foray into feature animation for Oscar-nominated director Herzog after close to 80 documentary and fiction feature credits including Grizzly Man, Fitzcarraldo, and Aguirre, The Wrath of God.

Sun Creature will providing animation services for the film out of its Bordeaux-based studio, and has brokered discussions with several potential French animation directors to collaborate with Herzog on the project.

The Twilight World tells the true story of Onoda, a Japanese intelligence officer who refused...

For “Captain America: Brave New World,” director Julius Onah wanted his entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe to be rooted in the world of a political thriller.

Films like “The Day of the Jackal,” “Le Samouraï” and even “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” were among some of his inspirations. Composer Laura Karpman, who is no stranger to the MCU, having scored “The Marvels” and “What If?,” drew from experience. “There was a cue from ‘Ms. Marvel’ which goes over the train sequence, it starts and continues, and I thought ‘I want to do that, ‘I want to write a piece of music that starts the steamrolling and keeps it going,’” she says.

Karpman called on New Orleans drummers. “I put them in a room with no music, just rhythm, and one of the rhythms wound up being the conspiracy music. That whole thing is this combination of this New...

For Werner Herzog, cinema is an active art, participatory one in which the creation of a work requires the practitioner to actually live (or have already lived) it, as if truth comes most compellingly from an artist’s firsthand experience with their subject matter. Herzog’s fiction films are intrinsically linked to his documentaries in that, in both cases, the German auteur is often not simply the storyteller but, also, a willing and essential participant, his presence fundamentally, messily tangled up in the final product.

So it goes with Aguirre, The Wrath of God, Herzog’s 1972 tale about an expedition of Spanish conquistadors through Peru’s jungles and down the treacherous Huallaga river. A saga of adventurers—led by Don Lope de Aguirre (Klaus Kinski)—driven headlong into annihilation by their hubris and desire for immortality, it’s the first of Herzog’s many features in which his (anti-)heroes...

While he's best known for his work in film noir, Robert Mitchum starred in over 30 movies in the Western genre as well. Called the "soul of film noir" by Roger Ebert, Mitchum is famous for his iconic villain roles in the '50s and the '60s. His work in noir as the classic anti-hero laid the foundation for many of the famous modern antagonistic characters of the genre. However, Mitchum's superior range as an actor helped him smoothly transition from the suave and stylized villainous roles in film noir to more rough-around-the-edges and dramatized roles.

As is seen in Western flicks like El Dorado, which is one of the actor's most famous films ever, and The Tombstones, where Mitchum serves as a narrator off-screen. Mitchum appears beside John Wayne in El Dorado, the latter having replaced the former in an older film after Mitchum was fired from Blood Alley.

Robert Watts, the British producer and production manager who collaborated with George Lucas on the first three Star Wars films and the first three Indiana Jones movies, has died. He was 86.

Watts died Monday in his sleep at his home in East Sussex, England, his rep, Julian Owen at Alliance Agents, told The Hollywood Reporter. “We were with him for a decade taking him to conventions all over the world, where he could connect with fans and talk about his career,” Owen said.

Watts also worked alongside Indiana Jones director Steven Spielberg on the Spielberg-produced Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) and An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991).

For the extremely challenging first Star Wars film, Watts served as production supervisor under production designer John Barry, and the two traveled to Morocco and Tunisia to scout locations. He then did some third-unit directing.

“We were under a great deal of pressure from 20th Century Fox,...

The Paddington films have always been imbued with a deep love of cinema. Paul King’s Paddington and Paddington 2 revelled in creating handcrafted textures, both beautifully shot and making nods to classic slapstick comedies, prison escape dramas, and soundstage musicals. Next, Paddington is venturing out of London – make way for Paddington In Peru, a threequel that sees Dougal Wilson make his directorial debut, taking the reins from King, and sending our young furry hero (and the Brown family) on an Amazonian adventure. That change of location means an influx of new cinematic touchstones.

Notably, Wilson mentions an influence from Werner Herzog’s jungle-traversing Aguirre, The Wrath Of God, and Fitzcarraldo. Yes, in a Paddington movie. It comes with the Peruvian territory – literally. “Peru has this incredible variety of landscapes, crazy geology, especially the Andes and the mysterious Incan side,” the director tells Empire. “If you’ve seen [Werner Herzog’s] Aguirre, The Wrath Of God,...

The Paddington saga is one of the most highly successful animated films of all time. Not only the first two films performed well at the box office, but they also earned critical acclaim. Such feat warranted another sequel, and this time, fans will be transported in a jungle adventure in Paddington in Peru.

Credits: Paddington in Peru / StudioCanal

The third installment is the first project in the franchise that won’t be helmed by director Paul King, though he took part in the story conceptualization, ensuring that the new film aligns with the core theme and message of the previous ones.

Paddington in Peru Oozes With Peruvian Culture and Folklore

Helmed by Dougal Wilson, Paddington in Peru will follow the adventures of Paddington, voiced by Ben Whishaw, and his adopted family as they traverse the Amazon rainforest and the Peruvian mountains in search of Aunt Lucy.

While it sounds like a typical comedy adventure story,...

La película tuvo su premiere mundial en el Festival de Málaga. © Vértice360

Ya se ha publicado el tráiler de Puntos suspensivos, un thriller dirigido por David Marqués y escrito por el propio Marqués y Rafa Calatayud Cano (Parecido a un asesinato), que tuvo su estreno mundial, dentro de la Sección Oficial Fuera de Concurso, en el 27º Festival de Málaga de Cine Español y fue galardonada con el Black Raven al Mejor Thriller en el 42º Festival Internacional de Cine Fantástico de Bruselas.

Puntos suspensivos sigue a Leo, un exitoso escritor de novelas de misterio que se esconde bajo el seudónimo de Cameron Graves. Mientras escribe su próximo libro en un chalet aislado, recibe la extraña visita de Jota, un inquietante personaje que dice ser periodista. Nadie conoce la identidad de Leo y solo Victoria, su agente, sabe que está allí, así que ¿cómo ha llegado Jota hasta él y cuáles son sus intenciones?...

Buenos Aires-based production, sales and distribution company FilmSharks has picked up all worldwide rights to the new crime thriller by Argentina’s Sebastian Schindel, “A Silent Death” (Una muerte silenciosa”), to which it has sold Latin American theatrical rights to Disney’s Star Distribution, slated for release later in the year.

Said FilmSharks CEO Guido Rud: “This is likely to become one of the biggest Latin American films of the year. Sebastian Schindel has earned his stripes as the Master of Crime after the huge international success of his films ‘The Boss,’ ‘Anatomy of a Crime,’ ‘Crimes that Bind’ and ‘The Wrath of God.’”

“There is a huge appetite for crime films across all platforms,” noted Rud who also holds the remake rights to the film.

Starring Joaquín Furriel, Soledad Villamil (“The Secret in Their Eyes”) Alejandro Awada (“Nine Queens”) and Maria Marull (“Wild Tales”), the psychological thriller is...

In Jon Favreau's 2008 film "Iron Man," the title hero (Robert Downey Jr.) was assisted in his high-tech superhero lab by an artificially intelligent butler-like presence named J.A.R.V.I.S. Iron Man's digital butler not only wrangled the hero's complicated engineering projects, but also controlled the even-higher-tech devices in his lab. When Iron Man went out on patrol, J.A.R.V.I.S.'s voice could be heard inside his helmet. J.A.R.V.I.S. was voiced by Paul Bettany. As the Marvel Cinematic Universe continued to grow, so too did Iron Man's computerized friend. Eventually, J.A.R.V.I.S. was shunted into an indestructible android body and renamed Vision (also Bettany). 

When Vision became sentient and autonomous, that meant Tony Stark had to program a new computer helper, and invented F.R.I.D.A.Y. (voiced by Kerry Condon...

There's no doubt about it: Werner Herzog is one of the greatest documentary filmmakers of all time and has been blessing the world with strange, unique, and compelling documentary features for more than half a century now. He's also made plenty of great non-documentary feature films, including classics of German cinema like Aguirre, the Wrath of God, and Nosferatu the Vampyre, as well as more recent English-language films like Rescue Dawn and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans.

Largely considered Werner Herzog’s breakout film, Aguirre, the Wrath of God would garner the cinematic icon much acclaim, the likes of which he would pay back tenfold through his relationship with the film’s star, Klaus Kinski, marking the start of one of the most dangerously violent actor-director relationships in cinema history. Though their first collaboration was mired by a constant feud between them, much of which was reportedly birthed from Kinski’s extremely sudden and frequent violent outbursts (there’s strong evidence to suggest that Klaus Kinski suffered from an extreme case of psychopathy), the pair would continue to work together for an additional four Herzog films, some of which were the director’s most acclaimed.

Exclusive: Wavelength’s documentary Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer is proving a hot property. The Emmy-winning film production company headed by Jenifer Westphal today announced Shout! Studios has acquired U.S. distribution rights to the film, and MetFilm has acquired international rights.

Thomas von Steinaecker wrote and directed the documentary about Herzog, the legendary German filmmaker who has brought to life dozens of films including Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972), Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), Fitzcarraldo (1982), and documentaries Grizzly Man (2005), Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010), and Meeting Gorbachev (2018). Von Steinaecker’s film “presents a comprehensive portrait of an iconic artist of our time and features interviews with Robert Pattinson, Nicole Kidman, Chloé Zhao, Christian Bale, and more,” according to a release. “With exclusive behind-the-scenes access into Herzog’s everyday life, rare and never-before-seen archival material and in-depth interviews with the man himself and celebrated collaborators, we are given an exciting glimpse into his process and personal life.

Hlynur Pálmason’s fictional account of a Danish pastor sent to Iceland in the 19th century is superb in its compositions and nuanced depictions of hostility

Harshness is transformed into beauty and then terror by this extraordinary film from Icelandic director Hlynur Pálmason about a 19th-century Danish pastor sent to establish a new church on Iceland’s remote south-eastern coast. I left the cinema dazed and elated by its artistry; it is breathtaking in its epic scale, magnificent in its comprehension of landscape, piercingly uncomfortable in its human intimacy and severity. There is such superb compositional sense in the still life tableau shots and the almost archaeological sense of time, creating something deeply mysterious and unbearably sad. There are echoes of Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Roland Joffé’s The Mission, Lisandro Alonso’s Jauja – and even Howard Hawks’s Red River.

Pálmason announces in the opening...

Barcelona-based sales shingle Filmax has acquired international rights to Spanish thriller “Ellipsis,” directed and co-written by Goya-nominated David Marqués.

“Ellipsis” toplines a slew of Spanish-language world stars, including Diego Peretti, José Coronado (“No Rest for the Wicked”), and iconic Mexican thesp Cecilia Suárez (“The House of Flowers”) and rising star Georgina Amorós (“Elite”).

Peretti plays protagonist Leo, a well-known author of mystery novels. He is paid a visit by a man claiming to be a journalist in a secret location where Leo is penning his next novel. But only his agent knows where he is. Could it be that a dark secret from Adriana ( Amorós), his lover, is behind the surprise visit?

The script was co-written by Rafael Calatayud Cano (“Tales of the Lockdown”) and Marqués, who is best-known for writing Spanish comedy-drama “Champions,” a box office and format smash hit directed by Javier Fesser.

Marqués said: “‘Ellipsis’ is an...

A long-lost piece of film history has been uncovered. Walter Saxer, who produced such Werner Herzog classics as Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo, and Nosferatu, made his sole directorial effort with Sepa: Nuestro Señor de los Milagro (Sepa: Our Lord of Miracles), which observes the open-air penal colony of the same name, created in 1951 by the Peruvian government in the Amazonian jungle.

Completed in 1986 and having screened only once––on Swiss television in the late 1980s––Sepa then faded from cinema history, its sole print existing in a residential closet in Italy. After a chance encounter with Dekanalog’s George Schmalz and Lysa Le, who visited Saxer’s Peruvian bed and breakfast in 2017, a conversation was started about unearthing and restoring the film negative, allowing his picture the release it always deserved.

Dekanalog will now open Sepa in theaters on October 14 and we’re pleased to exclusively debut its first trailer.

The offbeat art house film merges with the old-fashioned Hollywood epic in Werner Herzog’s astonishing Aguirre, the Wrath of God (accent on “wrath”). Filmed under punishing conditions in the Peruvian jungle, Herzog upped the pain quotient by casting the unruly Klaus Kinski as the mad conquistador Lope de Aguirre—the legendary battles between director and actor were epic too.

The post Aguirre, the Wrath of God appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

The upcoming ViX Plus romantic drama series “Travesuras de la Niña Mala” (“Bad Girl”), an adaptation of the 2006 novel by Nobel Prize laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, has found its heroine.

Macarena Achaga, who most recently starred in HBO Max’s “Father of the Bride,” will play Arlette, a non-conformist who urges her lover to break away from his routine and be more adventurous. Their lives will intersect over forty years across Lima, Paris, Madrid, Tokyo, London and other cities.

“‘The ‘Bad Girl’ invites us to challenge our life in auto pilot, transform ourselves and take charge of who we want to be, and seek happiness while feeling immortal because what is life without those moments when we forget that everything has an end?” the synopsis goes.

“’Travesuras de la Niña Mala’ proves that my purpose of seeking equity and the projection of our female voices attracts characters ready for anything,...

“Stranger Things 4” is not losing any steam ahead of its Volume 2 premiere in a week-and-a-half. Following last week’s announcement that it had become Netflix’s most-watched English-language TV season ever, the sci-fi series’ fourth installment continued its dominance on the charts with 102.26 million hours viewed between June 13-19, appearing in the Top 10 in 93 countries. Season 4 was the most viewed title this week, having now amassed 883.30 million hours viewed in total since its premiere May 27 and maintaining its top spot on the Most Popular list.

Previous seasons of “Stranger Things” also held spots on the Top 10 this week, with Season 3, 2 and 1 occupying Nos. 4, 5 and 6. “First Kill” — the YA vampire romance series that launched June 10 — held the third spot, with 48.77 million hours viewed, after “Peaky Blinders” Season 6, which logged 61.36 million hours.

Netflix

On the non-English side, “Squid Game” fought its way back into the Top 10 this week on the heels of...

Just one month after debuting a fan favorite genre hit in the form of Stranger Things season 4, Netflix is once again coming out with the big guns for its list of new releases for June 2022.

The Umbrella Academy season 3 is set to be released June 22 and it will be a busy one for the Hargreeves family of crime fighters. After averting a 1963 nuclear apocalypse in season 2, the gang returns to the present only to find there’s a new team called the Sparrows living in their house. Based on the trailer for season 3, hilarity and many superpowers punches thrown will ensue.

Read more TV The Umbrella Academy Officially Introduces The Sparrow Academy By Alec Bojalad TV The Umbrella Academy Season 3: What To Expect By Michael Ahr

Other Netflix TV original series of note this month include the vampire love story First Kill (June 10) the Melissa McCarthy comedy God’s Favorite Idiot...