Two who are one, and one who is two—Jean (Kate Mara) and Joan (Rooney Mara). Moving with the same gestures, uttering the same words, and loving the same man in the form of Mulroney (Orlando Bloom), they are played by real-life sisters appearing together for the first time. Their synchronized rhythm collides with the order of the world. The film, which at first narrates the sisters’ exploits as if chasing some strange rumor, turns its gaze to their new lives amid the sensory world of nature and labor. From there it moves into depths where the boundary between reality and fantasy grows hard to discern. Following a journey where devotion and eccentricity, sublimity and absurdity, are tangled together, it becomes difficult to say with certainty whether the strangeness in the film belongs to the two characters or to a world that cannot accept them. Herzog drives the story forward, propelled by inexplicable simultaneity and subtle dissonance, towards whatever may await at the end.
Werner Herzog was born in Munich, Germany, in 1942. After making his first film at the age of nineteen, he has worked across both fiction films and documentaries, while also directing operas, writing prose, and acting. He won the Silver Bear Special Jury Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival for Signs of Life (1968), the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival for The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974), and the Best Director award at Cannes for Fitzcarraldo (1982). His major works include Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), Grizzly Man (2005), and Rescue Dawn (2006). His new film, Bucking Fastard, was invited to the Competition section of the Venice Film Festival.
From Busan International Film Festival 2026, No. 31
