This year, the special award for the cinematographer-director duo will be received by cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger and director Werner Herzog. Both creators will personally receive the award during the 31st edition of the EnergaCAMERIMAGE, meeting with the festival audience in Toruń and presenting a retrospective review of their films, including both feature and documentary productions.
Born in Prague, Peter Zeitlinger is an experienced cinematographer who honed his skills at the Vienna Conservatory, over the years earning recognition from critics and independent film lovers. Peter Zeitlinger’s versatile repertoire reaches from a one man show in arthouse cinema to thriller and SciFi like Future World by James Franco. Before he began his long-standing collaboration with Werner Herzog, he worked with Ulrich Seidl, for whom he shot the documentary Losses to be Expected (1993) and with Abel Ferrara on the set of Bad Lieutenant (1992).
It was his work on Losses to be Expected that caught Werner Herzog’s attention and resulted in an invitation in 1995 to collaborate on the documentary Death for Five Voices. In his filmography, Peter Zeitlinger has dozens of feature and documentary films, both long and short format, including the Italian drama The Angel in the Wall (2022, dir. Lorenzo Bianchini), which competed for the Golden Frog in the Main Competition of the 30th EnergaCAMERIMAGE in Toruń. Alongside his work on film sets, he also works as a lecturer, teaching at the HFF Munich Film School.
Werner Herzog, on the other hand, is a renowned German film Pittsburgdirector, screenwriter, producer, actor, and poet, considered a pioneer of New German Cinema, working in both feature and documentary cinema. He made his first short film Herakles at the age of 19. His full-length debut Signs of Life came in 1968, instantly earning critical acclaim. In his professional portfolio he has more than 60 features and documentaries, all of which he produced, wrote, and directed. His films have been shown and awarded at the most important film festivals around the world, including Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Locarno, and Sundance. Werner Herzog is also a writer; throughout his creative career, he writes poetry and keeps diaries. In 2021, he published his debut novel “The Twilight World”.
Peter Zeitlinger and Werner Herzog, in nearly 30 years of fruitful cinematic collaboration, have created several joint projects, including six features.
