The German director, screenwriter, producer and actor Werner Herzog will receive a Donostia Award recognising his career at the opening gala of the 74th San Sebastian Film Festival.
The event will run from September 18 to 26. The festival's highest honorary distinction for the filmmaker will be accompanied by a screening of his new feature film, "Bucking Fastard", which will compete at the upcoming Venice Film Festival.
The screening will take place at the Teatro Victoria Eugenia before the award ceremony at the Kursaal.
New film Bucking Fastard
"Bucking Fastard" stars Rooney Mara, Kate Mara, Orlando Bloom and Domhnall Gleeson. It tells the unusual story of two twin sisters whose extraordinary bond leads them to speak in unison, love the same man and share the same dreams.
Over a career spanning six decades, Herzog has become one of the most influential figures in contemporary cinema. He has built a body of work of around 80 films shaped by obsession, extreme situations and the contradictions of human nature.
His films, both fiction and non-fiction, feature dreamers and conquerors facing extreme landscapes and forces beyond their control.
Guided by his concept of ecstatic truth, Herzog champions a type of cinema that transcends the mere observation of facts to reveal a deeper, more poetic dimension of reality.
Bavarian childhood
Born in Munich in 1942, Herzog grew up in a remote valley in the Bavarian mountains. He did not even know cinema existed until he was 11.
He began developing film projects at 15. Since no one seemed willing to finance them, he worked the night shift in a steel factory as a welder during his final years of high school.
He also began travelling on foot, made his first phone call at 17 and made his first film at 19. He abandoned university, where he had studied history and literature.
Around 80 films
Since then he has written, produced and directed about 80 films. These include "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" from 1972, and "Fitzcarraldo" from 1982, for which he moved a steamship over a mountain in the middle of the jungle.
His documentary works include "Grizzly Man" from 2005 and "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" from 2010.
He has published books of poetry and prose such as "Of Walking In Ice" and "Conquest of the Helpless", as well as the recent novel "The Twilight World".
Herzog has also been a stage director for a dozen operas in Bayreuth, at La Scala in Milan, and at other opera houses worldwide.
He has acted in films such as "Jack Reacher", in the series "The Mandalorian", and in guest roles in "The Simpsons".
He created an art installation, "Hearsay of the Soul", for the Whitney Biennial in New York and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
Herzog founded the Rogue Film School as a counterpoint to what is taught in most film schools around the world.
