Werner Herzog is a cult figure. Hardly any other director has had as many imitations on the social networks. He made several guest appearances on The Simpsons and attracted particular attention as the villain in the Star Wars series The Mandalorian. It is not for nothing that 'Time Magazine' ranked him among the most influential people in the world in 2009.

With his approximately 70 feature films and documentaries, Herzog has created extraordinary images. They go far beyond what we are used to seeing in the cinema. His work ranges from feature films from the era of New German Cinema to Hollywood productions with stars such as Nicole Kidman and Christian Bale to idiosyncratic documentaries. In addition, he has appeared several times as an actor himself, written books (most recently 'Das Dämmern der Welt', 2021) and founded his own film school, the "Rogue Film School". He is always in search of an "ecstatic truth" that is not bound by facts and goes deeper than reality.

Werner Herzog challenges his audience, he polarizes. His career has been accompanied by controversial debates in which opinions sometimes diverge widely. The exhibition therefore aims to present his multi-layered work to a broad audience and at the same time to question it critically. For this purpose, the extensive Werner Herzog Archive, which is housed in the Deutsche Kinemathek, can be evaluated for the first time.