30. Film Festival della Lessinia
Bosco Chiesanuova (Italia)
23 August - 1 September 2024

Italian premiere

In 2002, in Bodh Gaya, India, hundreds of thousands of Buddhist Faithful gathered for an important initation ritual in the presence of the Dalai Lama. The faithful ascend in pilgrimages to the Kadash Mountain in a long walk of some 52 km that will bring them to almost 5.000 metres about sea level. The religious Buddhists follow this route in a clockwise movement, while the followers of the shamanic rite follow counter-clockwise path. Herzog films this extraordinary wheel of a magnificent mandala, destined, according to Buddhist custom, to be destroyed once completed. Werner Herzog's narration emphasizes the power oh these spiritual sentiments, allowing us to share the profund amotions with the participants in this event.

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  Werner Herzog

  Werner Herzog (1942) is a director, screenwriter, producer and documentary maker, considered one of the most important exponents of the new German cinema. Growing up in a small Bavarian village, he spent his childhood without ever seeing a film. After making his debut as a director at the age of nineteen, he made more than fifty films and documentaries, which earned him international fame and numerous awards, such as The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) and Fitzcarraldo (1982), awarded at Cannes, and Signs of Life (1968), winner of the Silver Bear in Berlin. The FFDL has already presented many of his works, including Kalachakra, Wheel of Time, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, The Wild Blue Yonder and La Sufrière.