Artist's Choice Screening: Aguirre the Wrath of God

One of the legendary Werner Herzog’s most celebrated films, Aguirre, the Wrath of God is a descent into the Amazonian jungle with a typically wild-eyed and ferocious central performance from Klaus Kinski. 

A Heart of Darkness-style odyssey into the natural world, it was filmed on location in the Peruvian rainforest. Like Coppola’s Apocalypse Now seven years later, the behind-the-scenes stories are almost as famous as the film itself; a notoriously difficult production in punishing conditions exacerbated by Herzog and Kinski’s infamously volatile working relationship. 

Loosely based on historical events, this 16th century tale of rampaging ego and violently destructive colonial folly mirrors its own inception and remains startlingly prescient more than fifty years later.