Updated

Updated · Vulture · Sep 3

Herzog Premieres 'Bucking Fastard' at Venice, Reuniting the Mara Sisters in His First Fiction Feature Since 2019

Updated

Updated · Vulture · Sep 3

Herzog Premieres 'Bucking Fastard' at Venice, Reuniting the Mara Sisters in His First Fiction Feature Since 2019

Q: Why did Werner Herzog transform a disturbing real-life twin stalking conviction into a whimsical romantic fable for his new film?

Werner Herzog turned the case into a whimsical romantic fable because he was not trying to reconstruct the Chaplin sisters’ stalking conviction literally; he wanted to use it as raw material for what he calls “ecstatic truth” — a deeper emotional reality reached through invention rather than strict fact. Herzog has said the screenplay is a “complete invention,” loosely inspired by the British twins Freda and Greta Chaplin, whose synchronized speech and court notoriety fascinated him for decades. What unlocked the project was realizing Kate and Rooney Mara could play sister figures with an unusually natural shared rhythm. Once that became possible, he wrote the script in five days and reshaped the true-crime premise into something more lyrical, romantic and surreal. That shift also fits Herzog’s long-running artistic interests. In Bucking Fastard, obsession is not treated mainly as pathology or scandal, but as part of a larger, operatic story about twin identity, longing, delusion and the search for love. The tunnel to an imagined land, the pastoral landscapes and the fluid, dreamlike style all move the film away from tabloid realism and toward myth. So the disturbing real-life case became, in Herzog’s hands, a fable because he was after emotional resonance, not courtroom accuracy. He appears to have seen the twins less as subjects of a true-crime drama than as vehicles for a poetic film about devotion, fantasy and outsider lives.

Q: Despite premiering as a Golden Lion contender, why does Werner Herzog's highly anticipated twin obsession film lack a U.S. release date?

It lacks a U.S. release date because no American distributor has acquired **Bucking Fastard** yet. Despite its high-profile Venice premiere in competition for the Golden Lion, the film remains in the sales stage. Trade reports around the festival say **HanWay Films is handling worldwide sales**, but **a U.S. deal has not been announced**, which means no domestic rollout can be scheduled. That is not unusual for an auteur-driven festival title, especially one as eccentric as Herzog’s. **Bucking Fastard** is being presented as a highly personal, surreal, and offbeat work rather than a conventional commercial drama, so distributors may be waiting to see its **critical reception and awards momentum** before committing. The film’s visibility could still help. It premiered at Venice with strong attention around Herzog, the Mara sisters’ first screen pairing, and the project’s unusual true-crime inspiration. It is also expected to continue on the fall festival circuit, which gives buyers more chances to assess audience and press response. So the reason is straightforward: **there is no U.S. release date because there is not yet a U.S. distributor attached to the film**.

3 articles · Updated · Vulture · Sep 3

Venice competition entry “Bucking Fastard” brings Rooney and Kate Mara together onscreen for the first time as sisters who speak and move in exact unison.
Herzog built the film from the real 1980s case of Yorkshire twins Freda and Greta Chaplin, recasting it as a fable about rejection, obsession and belonging, with Orlando Bloom as the neighbor they pursue.
The review casts the project as one Herzog chased for decades and as a return to fiction after 2019’s “Family Romance LLC,” linking it to the holy-fool figures of his earlier work.
Still, the film is judged one of Herzog’s more ambitious recent efforts yet cinematically flat, with the Maras praised but the direction said to mute the story’s stranger, more transcendent possibilities.