Burden of Dreams

For nearly five years, iconic German filmmaker, Werner Herzog, desperately tried to complete one of the most ambitious films of his career; Fitzcarraldo, the story of one man’s attempt to build an opera house deep in the Amazon jungle. The production is made perilous by Herzog’s determination to shoot the most daunting scenes without models or special effects, including a sequence requiring hundreds of indigenous Peruvians to pull a full-size, 320-ton steamship over a small mountain. Knowing how precarious his position was, Herzog invited Blank along to capture every moment of adventure, jangly nerves, overblown grandiosity and unexpected beauty. The result is an extraordinary document of the filmmaking process and a unique look into the single-minded mission of one of cinema’s most fearless directors.