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

Italian premiere

The Amazon Rainforest at the dawn of the twentieth Century. Brian Sweeny Ftzgerald, an Irish baron who the natives call Fitzcarraldo, has a great dream: to build the bisggest opera house thas has ever existed. To inaugurate it, ha wants the great tenor, Caruso. To finance this venture, ha plans to use the rubber trade. But the area where the most trees are found, around the Ucayali River, is divided amongst the largest producers. However, this is an area near the upper course of the river that is rich with treen and has no owner. Fitzgerald  plans to reach it by passing through the river that flows nearby and dragging a ship over the hillock that separates it from the Ucayali. Soon, discontent erupts  among the sailors. The river is inhabited by frocious Indios, theHivaros. The crew abandons the ship. The Indios arrive and, mistaking him for a god, help Fitzgerald to transport the ship over the mountain. The daring venture fails. On his return to Iquitos, Fitzcarraldo resells the ship, and with the proceeds hires the orchestra that he had heared in Manaus for a concert and even, even though he hasn't built theatre, succeed in bring opera music to the inhabitants of his city.

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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.