Werner Herzog is embarking on his first narrative feature since 2019 with the cleverly titled Bucking Fastard. Set to star as twin sisters are real-life sisters Kate and Rooney Mara in the first film they’ve done together. And now thanks to Hanway Films we have our first official look at Herzog’s latest, which has just wrapped production ahead of Cannes.
The Mara Sisters star, joined by Domhnall Gleeson and Orlando Bloom. Bucking Fastard centers on Jean and Joan Holbrooke, “two sisters so deeply connected that they speak in unison, are in love with the same man, and share identical dreams. They even make the same verbal slips at the same time. Driven by a longing for a mythical place called the Orkneys—where they believe true love exists—they begin digging a tunnel through a vast mountain range in search of it.”
The Holbrookes are based on real-life British twin sisters Freda and Greta Chaplin, who gained notoriety in the 1980s for having a restraining order put on them both by a man they shared.
Herzog opened up about Bucking Fastard recently and says it’s the conclusion to a thematic trilogy that began with two of his most prominent films…
“Bucking Fastard” is a film that, for me, completes a circle in an operatic triptych with my previous films, “Fitzcarraldo” and “Grizzly Man.” We cannot see the world as Jean and Joan Holbrooke see it, but we do see how the world reacts to them — through the courts and the press, through those that want to help and those who want to use them, through the eyes of beasts both tame and wild, and even through their own echoes in the core of the earth.
Typically, Herzog films aren’t huge money earners, he rarely does narratives and mostly focuses on documentaries, but Bucking Fastard has enough star power and novelty to change that.
