# Werner Herzog filmography

Werner Herzog (born 1942) is a German filmmaker whose films often feature ambitious or deranged protagonists with impossible dreams. Herzog's works span myriad genres and mediums, but he is particularly well known for his documentary films, which he typically narrates.
In 1962, Herzog made his directorial debut with the German-language short Herakles. His feature film debut—Signs of Life (1968)—garnered him the Silver Bear at Berlinale. Six years later, Herzog's The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival. Starting in this period, Herzog collaborated with actor Klaus Kinski on five films, Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), Woyzeck (1979), Fitzcarraldo (1982), and Cobra Verde (1987). Fitzcarraldo won Herzog the Best Director Award at Cannes. His tumultuous relationship with Kinski was the subject of Herzog's 1999 documentary My Best Fiend. Herzog directed two films in 2009, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done and the Nicolas Cage-starring Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, both of which were nominated for a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. He has directed a number of other fictional feature films as well as shorts.
Herzog made his documentorial debut with 1969's The Flying Doctors of East Africa. In his documentaries, Herzog often explores the "moral or existential abyss", commonly in nature. His first documentary to screen at Cannes, Fata Morgana (1971), for instance, pairs footage of barren African desert landscapes with a recitation of the Mayan creation myth, the Popol Vuh. Similarly, Herzog's film Lessons of Darkness (1992) matches Richard Wagner overtures with documentation of the Gulf War's wake of chaos and destruction in Kuwait. Lessons of Darkness was criticized for its supposed "aestheticizing" of war. As with his fictional works, Herzog's documentaries also examine nonconformists outside conventional society, such as Timothy Treadwell in his 2005 documentary Grizzly Man. Herzog studied the pilot Dieter Dengler in his 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly, which he later remade into the 2006 feature film Rescue Dawn starring Christian Bale. The following year, his exploration of the lives of scientists in Antarctica—2007's Encounters at the End of the World—garnered him an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary. For his 2018 documentary Meeting Gorbachev, Herzog had extensive interviews with the Soviet leader. He has directed dozens of other documentaries, including shorts and television segments.
In addition to his own works, Herzog has appeared in other projects, including as the narrator or subject of documentaries and mockumentaries. He has appeared in two Les Blank documentaries, including Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980), in which he eats his shoe after losing a bet to then-college student Errol Morris, and Burden of Dreams, shot during and about the chaotic filming of Herzog's Fitzcarraldo. Herzog has also appeared in commercial films and television series, often portraying villains, such as in the 2012 Tom Cruise film Jack Reacher, or, in 2019, The Mandalorian. He has made cameo appearances in The Simpsons, Parks and Recreation, and other television series.

## Films

Table featuring films by Werner Herzog :
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer |
| 1968 | Signs of Life | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1970 | Even Dwarfs Started Small | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1972 | Aguirre, the Wrath of God | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1974 | The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1976 | Heart of Glass | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1977 | Stroszek | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1979 | Nosferatu the Vampyre | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1979 | Woyzeck | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1982 | Fitzcarraldo | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1984 | Where the Green Ants Dream | Yes | Yes | No |
| 1987 | Cobra Verde | Yes | Yes | No |
| 1991 | Scream of Stone | Yes | No | No |
| 2001 | Invincible | Yes | Yes | No |
| 2005 | The Wild Blue Yonder | Yes | Yes | No |
| 2006 | Rescue Dawn | Yes | Yes | No |
| 2009 | Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans | Yes | No | No |
| 2009 | My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done | Yes | Yes | No |
| 2015 | Queen of the Desert | Yes | Yes | No |
| 2016 | Salt and Fire | Yes | Yes | No |
| 2019 | Family Romance, LLC | Yes | Yes | No |
| TBA | The Twilight World | Yes | Yes | Yes |

### Acting roles

| Year | Title | Role |
| 1971 | Geschichten vom Kübelkind | Hurenmörder |
| 1983 | Man of Flowers | Father |
| 1989 | Bride of the Orient | |
| 1989 | Hard to Be a God | Mita/Richard |
| 1998 | What Dreams May Come | Chris's father |
| 1999 | Julien Donkey-Boy | Father |
| 2007 | Mister Lonely | Father Umbrillo |
| 2007 | The Grand | The German |
| 2012 | Jack Reacher | Zek Chelovek |
| 2013 | Home from Home | Alexander von Humboldt |
| 2014 | Penguins of Madagascar | Documentary filmmaker |
| 2024 | Orion and the Dark | Narrator |

### Short films

Table featuring short films by Werner Herzog :
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer | Editor | Sound |
| 1962 | Herakles | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1964 | Game in the Sand | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| 1966 | The Unprecedented Defence of the Fortress Deutschkreuz | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| 1968 | Last Words | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| 1969 | Precautions Against Fanatics | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| 1976 | No One Will Play with Me | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| 1988 | Les Gaulois | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| 2009 | Plastic Bag | No | No | Yes | No | No |

## Documentary films

Table featuring documentary feature films by Werner Herzog :
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Narrator | Producer | Notes |
| 1969 | The Flying Doctors of East Africa | Yes | Yes | No | No | |
| 1971 | Handicapped Future | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | |
| 1971 | Land of Silence and Darkness | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | |
| 1971 | Fata Morgana | Yes | No | No | No | |
| 1974 | The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | |
| 1976 | How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 1981 | Huie's Sermon | Yes | No | No | Yes | |
| 1981 | God's Angry Man | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 1984 | Ballad of the Little Soldier | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 1985 | The Dark Glow of the Mountains | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 1989 | Herdsmen of the Sun | Yes | No | Yes | No | |
| 1990 | Echoes from a Sombre Empire | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 1991 | Jag Mandir | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 1992 | Lessons of Darkness | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 1993 | Bells from the Deep | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | |
| 1994 | The Transformation of the World into Music | Yes | No | No | No | |
| 1995 | Gesualdo: Death for Five Voices | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | |
| 1997 | Little Dieter Needs to Fly | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | |
| 1998 | Wings of Hope | Yes | No | Yes | No | |
| 1999 | My Best Fiend | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | |
| 2003 | Wheel of Time | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | |
| 2004 | The White Diamond | Yes | No | Yes | No | |
| 2005 | Grizzly Man | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | |
| 2007 | Encounters at the End of the World | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Also sound |
| 2010 | Cave of Forgotten Dreams | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | |
| 2010 | Happy People: A Year in the Taiga | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Co-directed with Dmitry Vasyukov |
| 2011 | Into the Abyss | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | |
| 2016 | Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | |
| 2016 | Into the Inferno | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | |
| 2018 | Meeting Gorbachev | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Co-directed with André Singer |
| 2019 | Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | |
| 2020 | Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | co-directed with Clive Oppenheimer |
| 2022 | The Fire Within: Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | |
| 2022 | Theatre of Thought | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | |

### Producer only

* The Act of Killing (2012)
* The Look of Silence (2014)
* Red Army (2014)
* A Gray State (2017)
Ref.:

### Appearances as himself

* Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers (1980)
* Burden of Dreams (1982)
* The South Bank Show (1982) Series 5, Episode 25
* Room 666 (1982)
* Tokyo-Ga (1985)
* Incident at Loch Ness (2004)
* All in This Tea (2007)
Ref.:

### Short films

Table featuring documentary short films by Werner Herzog :
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer |
| 1977 | La Soufrière | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1980 | Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe | No | Yes | No |
| 1986 | Portrait Werner Herzog | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 2001 | Pilgrimage | Yes | No | No |
| 2002 | Ten Thousand Years Older | Yes | No | No |
| 2009 | La Bohème | Yes | No | No |
| 2011 | Ode to the Dawn of Man | Yes | No | No |
| 2013 | From One Second to the Next | Yes | No | No |

### Narrator

* La Soufrière (1977)
* Portrait Werner Herzog (1982)
* Ten Thousand Years Older (2002)
* Dinotasia (2012)

## Television

Table featuring television series by Werner Herzog :
| Year | Title | Director | Narrator | Notes |
| 1991–1992 | Filmstunde | Yes | Yes | Series of interviews conducted by Herzog |
| 1999 | 2000 Years of Christianity | Yes | No | Episode 9 "Christ and Demons in New Spain" |
| 2012–2013 | On Death Row | Yes | Yes | 8 episodes |

### Producer

* Last Exit: Space (2022)

### Acting roles

Table featuring films with Werner Herzog :
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
| 2010 | The Boondocks | Himself | Episode 31 "It's a Black President, Huey Freeman" |
| 2011, 2019, 2020, 2021 | The Simpsons | Walter Hotenhoffer, Dr. Lund and The Amazing Herzog | Episodes "The Scorpion's Tale", "Crystal Blue-Haired Persuasion", "Screenless" and "Mother and Child Reunion" |
| 2012 | American Dad! | Himself | Episode "Ricky Spanish" |
| 2012 | Metalocalypse | Ishnifus Meaddle | 9 episode (voice role) |
| 2015 | Parks and Recreation | Ken Jeggings | Episode "2017" |
| 2015 | Rick and Morty | Old Reptile | Episode "Interdimensional Cable 2: Tempting Fate" |
| 2019 | The Mandalorian | The Client | Episodes "Chapter 1: The Mandalorian", "Chapter 3: The Sin" and "Chapter 7: The Reckoning" |
| 2024–present | Conan O'Brien Must Go | Narrator | |