Few figures loom as large as Werner Herzog in the history of film. A pioneer in terms of versatility, there are few figures who have navigated the complexity of storytelling in narrative and non-fiction storytelling at the scale Herzog has accomplished. He sat down to talk with FandomWire about his latest film, Ghost Elephants. With the help of producer Ariel Isacovitch, who captured sequences in the wilderness, Herzog tells another brilliant tale of a scientist searching for the unknown. We also touched on Grizzly Man‘s 20th anniversary, his upcoming feature, Bucking Fastard, and a new project on the horizon.

Interview with Werner Herzog for Ghost Elephants

FANDOMWIRE: I wanted to jump into one of the cooler sequences of the film, where you and your filmmaking team go out into the jungle across rivers. You’re transporting motorcycles and camera equipment in those little boats across crocodile-infested waters. How do you, as a director, approach a scene like that with your cameramen? Are you giving them strict instructions about what to shoot, or do they come to you with ideas about where to position themselves?

WERNER HERZOG: Well, I have to make something clear. Walking 150 miles on foot and then 10 hours in the highlands, in very difficult terrain after elusive elephants, I’m too old for that. Because of that, I delegate with a very interesting man, Ariel Isacovitch.

ARIEL ISACOVITCH: It was a good question, which is why I was laughing here.

WERNER HERZOG: Of course, he had a very precise bucket list. He knew exactly what I needed. But he had liberty. I had trust in him with the film’s weird stuff. For example, a very large spider, poisonous, with 100 or so little spiders equally poisonous, teeming on its back. He understood what I was after. Namibia, I did myself. I was shooting there, but it was easier terrain, and I didn’t have to be in physical pursuit every single day.

ARIEL ISACOVITCH: It was around 16 to 20 miles every day, walking from the morning, like a good rhythm of the locals, of the hunters. They are not resting.

Related: John Wilson on Assembling the Hilarious Footage of “The History of Concrete” at Sundance

FANDOMWIRE: It certainly seems intense. I wanted to bring up the hunters. Over the past 20 years, you’ve really leaned into documentaries about ecology and the world, giving it a much broader perspective. I love how much you focus on the cultures your documentaries cover. How difficult is it with a movie like Ghost Elephants, where, on one hand, people are excited to see the elephants and the nature aspect, but also you’re very focused on an ethnographic approach to the filmmaking?

WERNER HERZOG: It’s not so much ethnographic, it’s anthropological. The very first moment that I ever had with the main tracker, I only said hello to him. He was introduced. I said my name and asked, “Can we switch on the camera?” Yeah, let’s do it. And I immediately tell him, “In your language, you call yourselves real people. What am I? I still have hair on my chest? Am I an animal?” And he laughs.

Within 20 seconds, we are in business, and we like each other. We know that they are the oldest, the primordial human beings, homo sapiens, 150 thousand years old. And we are direct lineage. Every other human are direct descendants of them. You’re just in awe, and you’d better respect them. They loved us, and they loved Ariel because he was wading through the swamps and carrying the motorcycle.

ARIEL ISACOVITCH: The Namibian hunters never crossed river waters in their lives. It was the first moment. So it was all holding them and that process with them for the first time. It was an incredible experience.

FANDOMWIRE: John Bois is such an intriguing scientist and ecologist. Even though what he’s searching for seems distant and dream-like, he is very hopeful that he’s going to find it. He knows it may not be good for the elephants in the long term. How did that inspire you as a filmmaker to follow him, and did it affect your choices in the film at all?

WERNER HERZOG: Let’s forget about hope. It’s a quest, and it’s in us. In human beings. It’s beautiful because he understands he may be pursuing only a dream. The film is not about wildlife. It’s about the dreams, about ghosts, about the spirits. The local people do a night-long elephant dance, and they get themselves into a trance so that the spirits of elephants can enter them. One of them faints. We ask him the next morning, and he thinks the elephant entered his body.

We have beautiful underwater footage where elephants are like a dream. So that’s a real core of the film. When you say protecting them, you see it’s not a film that gives away their location. The location is uninhabited; no bridges, no villages, roads, nothing. As large as the country of England. Poachers, potential poachers, they see this is hopeless. It’s hopelessly far inside. Even with a helicopter, you may be able to fly in, but then you don’t have the fuel to fly yourself out again. That’s impossible.

Besides, the hardships of getting in there, the local king, they have hunters. They will find you. And they have poisoned arrows. Once they spot you, you will be as dead as it gets. This is much better protection than any armed rangers.

FANDOMWIRE: You’ve been very outspoken about how people who are interested in filmmaking need to step out there and just go shoot on whatever is available. I found it so resonant in Ghost Elephants. Some of the footage that you capture is because of the versatility of cell phones, of having the cameras on a small device when your cameramen are not nearby. Why do you think filmmakers are so hesitant to use some of these tools that are available to them when they’re making their movies?

WERNER HERZOG: I do not know; I can’t enter their minds. But I try to be encouraging. And by the way, there was no time for me for any preparation. I was originally invited by Steve Bois to come to Namibia and be an advisor. The South African team had good people, competent people, but they didn’t know how to handle the story. So on the first day, it was clear I should step in somehow.

On the second day, everybody asked me, “Oh, please take over. Can you do this?” And I said, “I don’t want to take the job of a director, a writer, a narrator away from anyone.” I don’t want that. Everybody said, “Oh, please do it.” So overnight, I have a film in my lap, and I have to function. With complete ease, I was in it.

Related: “Little Miss Sunshine” Directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris and Producer Peter Saraf on the Film’s 20th Anniversary

FANDOMWIRE: You just mentioned the writing and the narration. I’ve always wondered how you approach that aspect of your films because it is such a huge part of all your non-fiction storytelling. Do you always shoot first and then write afterwards? Or do you take bits and pieces of notes along the way?

WERNER HERZOG: The film always emerges when you are confronted with the material, with the footage. The story manifests itself. If Steve Bois had never found one of the ghost elephants, I would have adapted. It would have been a different story. I do not try to squeeze it into the strictures and fetters of a concept of an ideology.

What I do while editing, I spontaneously say to the editor, “Oh, we need to explain this.” Eight or nine feet away, we have a little booth and a professional microphone. I immediately speak it. We immediately fit it in and move on.

FANDOMWIRE: We recently named Grizzly Man as one of the best movies of the last 25 years. It’s been a little over 20 years since Grizzly Man was released. When I was watching Ghost Elephants, I couldn’t help but see a lot of similarities between Bois and Treadwell, both in their monomania and in their pure conviction to document the creatures. Did the similarities pop out to you early, or was that something that you saw later in the film?

WERNER HERZOG: No, I saw it later. Of course, Steve Bois is not a monomaniac. He’s a very coherent human being. He has the deep curiosity of a scientist, of course, and his vision of ghosts and his dreams carry him.

The same thing with Timothy Treadwell; he was not monomaniacal. He was misguided. It was a misguided philosophy, believing that wild nature was like in Walt Disney movies. Where you confront a grizzly, and you sing a song to the bear, and then you hug the bear. You just don’t do it. You don’t have to love the grizzly bear, but you’d better respect the grizzly bear and its territory. This misunderstanding, unfortunately, cost him his life and the life of his girlfriend, who was along with Treadwell.

FANDOMWIRE: One of the other people you consistently collaborate with is Ernst Reijseger. The music on Ghost Elephants is incredible, and you have these long stretches where it is just the score and visuals carrying the film. It is so gorgeous to feel all of that at once. When he’s working on a score for you, do you give many notes? Or do you let him go and just let him take it in any direction he wants?

WERNER HERZOG: I need very precise instructions for him. Normally, we send him samples that need music, and he will live himself into the music, into the film. For example, when you see the underwater elephants, it’s complete dreams. I said to him here, “In this case, I want you to play Schubert’s Notturno and add some cello voice and embroidery into it. But it has to be Schubert’s Notturno and play it slowly. He knew, and he understands instantly. The images are so, so deep and so compelling because they’re embedded in music and embedded in the meaning of what we see in a dream. Maybe wildlife in the future will only remain as a dream.

FANDOMWIRE: That is both incredibly melancholic and very insightful.

WERNER HERZOG: By the way, much of the rest is like a requiem or a lament. And of course, I wanted him to play along with Sardinian shepherds’ voices that sound really prehistoric. Of course, I wanted that.

FANDOMWIRE: What about Ghost Elephants do you think is so pertinent to the way that we look at conservation today? It is an incredibly gorgeous movie about preserving nature, but it also focuses on exploration and discovery. How do we live with both truths at the same time?

WERNER HERZOG: It’s easy. It’s just go for the story. As a storyteller, I know this is big, and audiences immediately react. We had a world premiere at the festival in Venice, and we had an endless standing ovation. You could tell it immediately captivates an audience. I don’t want to analyze what it is exactly. I only know it’s big, and this is a good one.

Related: Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie Creators/Stars Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol Discuss the Guerilla Comedy (INTERVIEW)

FANDOMWIRE: This is a great one. You obviously have a narrative feature coming up next, Bucking Fastard. How is that process going? When can we expect it?

WERNER HERZOG: The film is finished, and we are planning to open it at one of the bigger festivals. Which one, we don’t know, but it’s really very, very good stuff. Wait for that one. I loved to work with the leading actresses, Kate Mara, Rooney Mara, and Orlando Bloom. It’s just a wonderful cast. You see things you have never seen in your life.

By the way, Ariel was a producer, one of the producers. But a fortnight ago, we started shooting yet another film in Mexico. In three weeks, we will continue in Vienna, Austria. So we are already into the very next one after Bucking Fastard.

Ghost Elephants is open in select theaters today. It releases on Disney+ and Hulu on March 6, 2026.
This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire