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Director, writer, producer and actor Werner Herzog will receive a Donostia Award in recognition of his career during the opening gala of the San Sebastián Festival, which will take place from 18 to 26 September for its 74th edition. The Festival’s highest honorary distinction for the German filmmaker will be accompanied by a screening of his new feature film, Bucking Fastard, which will compete in the upcoming Venice Film Festival.
Over a career spanning six decades, Werner Herzog has become one of the most influential figures in contemporary cinema, building an extraordinary body of work ―around 80 films― shaped by obsession, extreme situations and the contradictions of human nature. His films, both fiction and non-fiction, are populated by dreamers and conquerors confronted with extreme landscapes and forces beyond their control. Guided by his concept of “Ecstatic Truth”, Herzog advocates a cinema that transcends the mere observation of facts to reveal a deeper, more poetic dimension of reality.
The Donostia Award Screening, which will take place at the Victoria Eugenia Theatre prior to the award ceremony at the Kursaal, will feature Werner Herzog's latest film. Starring Rooney Mara, Kate Mara, Orlando Bloom and Domhnall Gleeson, Bucking Fastard tells the unusual story of sisters whose extraordinary bond leads them to speak in unison, love the same man and share the same dreams.
Biography
Werner Herzog, born in Munich in 1942, grew up as a child in a remote valley in the Bavarian mountains. Until age 11, he did not even know of the existence of cinema. He started to develop film projects from age 15 on, and since no one was willing to finance them, he worked the night shift as a welder in a steel factory during the last years of high school. He also started to travel on foot.
He made his first phone call at age 17 and his first film at 19. He dropped out of college where he studied history and literature.
Since then he has written, produced and directed some 80 films. They include Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes / Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972); Fitzcarraldo (1982), for which he moved a steamship over a mountain in the jungle; Grizzly Man (2005) and Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010).
He has published poetry and books of prose that include Of Walking In Ice, Conquest of the Useless and, recently, The Twilight World, a novel.
He staged about a dozen operas ―in Bayreuth and at La Scala in Milano― and other opera houses around the world.
He acted in films, among them Jack Reacher, The Mandalorian and guest roles in The Simpsons. He created an art installation, Hearsay of the Soul, for the Biennale of the Whitney Museum in New York and the Getty Museum in Los Angles. He founded his own Rogue Film School as a counterpoint to what is taught in most film schools around the world.
Bucking Fastard is about two sisters, Jean and Joan Holbrooke, who are so close to each other that they speak in unison, love the same man, and have the same dreams. They even make the same slip of tongue in unison. We cannot see the world as they see it, but we do see how it reacts to them – through the courts and the press, through those that want to help and those who want to use them.
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