Encounters at the End of the World

Werner Herzog goes to Antarctica and talks to the people working at McMurdo Station. He says at the start what this will not be: a fluffy penguin documentary. What interests him is what people who choose to live in the hardest place on earth are looking for. Herzog and cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger had only seven weeks to conceive and shoot the project after arriving. The work ran under the National Science Foundation's Artists and Writers Program, and the foundation did not oversee the content, which let footage normally kept from public release into the film. The most cited scene is at the end: a penguin leaves both its colony and its feeding grounds and walks alone toward the mountains inland. There is no food where it is going and it does not turn back. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 94 percent. It was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 81st Academy Awards, losing to Man on Wire, and won Best Documentary at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Herzog dedicated it to Roger Ebert, who was fighting cancer and had recently lost the ability to speak. Who it is for: viewers who like Herzog's narrating voice and strange questions about human behaviour. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a nature documentary. The film is far more interested in the people than the landscape.