Burden of Dreams

“If I abandon this project, I will be a man without dreams, and I don’t want to live like that”, said Werner Herzog while shooting Fitzcarraldo. The story about the making of the film has long become a legend. The plot is about one man's obsession to build an opera house deep in the Amazon jungle. While on location in South American rain forests, far from civilization, the film crew encountered some of the most unbelievable and dangerous obstacles in the history of film production. Burden Of Dreams takes us behind the scenes of Fitzcarraldo and shows us Herzog's efforts to make the film without special effects, including the scene in which hundreds of Indians drag a 320-ton boat across a hill. Ready to sacrifice everything to make his vision come true, Herzog starts resembling the protagonist of his film. All of that is caught on Les Blank's camera. The result is an incredible record of a filmmaking process and a unique insight into an obsessive mission of one of the most intrepid film directors of our time.