“Bucking Fastard”, interview with director Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog is in competition at the Venice Film Festival 2026 with Bucking Fastard, which follows two sisters, Jean and Joan Holbrooke, played by Kate Mara and Rooney Mara, who are so close that they speak in unison, love the same man, and share the same dreams, down to making the same slip of the tongue at once. The story also traces how the world reacts to them, through courts and press, through those who want to help and those who want to use them, with a cast that also includes Orlando Bloom and Domhnall Gleeson. Herzog spoke about the tribute to David Lynch that opens the film, the origin of its title, and why he sees storytelling as an art built to outlast any single era.

An homage to David Lynch

Asked why the film opens with a tribute to David Lynch, Herzog waves off any deeper reading: “Don’t read too much into it.” The idea came to him while editing, when he told his editor, “I would like David Lynch to be the first one to sit in the first screening with me.” He had hoped to have Lynch beside him at the world premiere in Venice, “but he died and I miss him.” Despite the differences between their films, he adds, “We had a deep recognition of each other even though we make such different films.”

A title spoken in unison

The film’s title comes directly from its two central characters. “It is even in the dialogue,” Herzog explains: “the sisters are so close that they speak in unison, they move in unison, they have the same dream at night, they fall in love with the same unworthy, undeserving man, and they make the same slip of the tongue at the same moment.” That coincidence struck him immediately: “that’s stunning, and I thought this should be the title.”

A film without precedent

For Herzog, Bucking Fastard belongs to a different timescale than most films. “It’s poetry,” he says, comparing it to his own back catalogue: “Fitzcarraldo was not for 1982.” Films like these, he argues, “are not trendy, and they will live fairly long.” He goes further about this particular film: “I think this Bucking Fastard has no precedence in film history. You have never seen anything like this, and you probably will not see anything like this later in your life.”

The joy of doing everything

Asked which part of the filmmaking process gives him the most joy at this stage in his career, Herzog doesn’t single anything out: “Everything. Writing, directing, editing, creating music, acting in films, everything. I just love everything.” He lists what is keeping him busy at the moment: a voice role in a Pixar film, a part in another animated film by Korean director Bong Joon-ho, a book of photography he is writing for the publishing house Taschen, and a new film of his own that is “only days away” from being finished.

Storytellers for the next 40,000 years

Herzog dismisses any suggestion that he might be pessimistic about the future of the industry. “No, not at all,” he says. “The storytelling we have since tens of thousands of years, and it will not go away.” Whatever the mood around cinema today, he insists the practice itself is not at risk: “No matter whether you are optimistic or pessimistic, there will be storytellers out for the next 40,000 years.”

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