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Homage Werner Herzog 2018
Little Dieter Needs to Fly Werner Herzog

Herzog sends his protagonist, who was shot down over Laos during the Vietnam War and spent six months in prison under inhuman conditions, on a psycho trip of a different kind.

Little Dieter Needs to Fly

Documentary Film
France,
Germany,
UK
1997
77 minutes
Subtitles: 
German

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Producer
Lucki Stipetić
Director
Werner Herzog
Cinematographer
Peter Zeitlinger
Editor
Rainer Standke
Script
Werner Herzog
Sound
Josh Rosen
Narrator
Werner Herzog, Dieter Dengler
Cast
Dieter Dengler, Werner Herzog, Eugene Deatrick
“Oh oh, this feels a little bit too close to home,” Dieter Dengler says into the camera when a few young Lao men tie up his hands again in the country of his torturers. Herzog sends his protagonist, who was shot down over Laos during the Vietnam War and spent six months in prison under inhuman conditions, on a psycho trip of a different kind. The film became a strategic model for working with re-enactments, for example in “The Act of Killing” (2012) by Joshua Oppenheimer, co-produced by Herzog. Herzog himself re-made the material into a feature film starring Christian Bale.

Kristina Jaspers