Werner Herzog ate his own shoe on camera, dragged a steamship over a mountain in the Amazon, and was shot by a sniper during an interview and kept talking. He has made over seventy films in conditions that would hospitalize most directors, pursuing what he calls “the ecstatic truth” — a reality deeper than facts.

This episode traces Herzog from his childhood in rural Bavaria through his volcanic partnership with Klaus Kinski, his documentaries at the edge of human endurance, and his emergence as cinema’s most quotable philosopher.

• He dragged a 320-ton steamship over a mountain during the filming of Fitzcarraldo
• He ate his shoe on camera after losing a bet with documentarian Errol Morris
• He was shot during a BBC interview and dismissed it as “not a significant bullet”
• He directed both narrative and documentary films, with over seventy titles spanning five decades