Film
Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin
Werner Herzog traces the footsteps of his late friend Bruce Chatwin, the restless travel writer whose life was cut short by AIDS. Using Chatwin's own rucksack as a talisman, Herzog journeys across continents seeking the nomadic spirits and forgotten peoples that obsessed his predecessor. It's a meditation on wandering, mortality, and artistic kinship—part essay, part pilgrimage, entirely Herzog.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you love Herzog's voice-over wandering, the way a restless traveller's notebook turns into a philosophy of home, and you don't mind a film that chases ideas more than plot.
Skip it if you need a clear through-line or brisk pacing, since this drifts, lingers on long stretches of travel and talking heads, and rarely says where it is headed.
What it asks of you: Roughly ninety minutes of unhurried wandering, long pauses, mixed archive footage and Herzog's measured narration carrying the pace more than any dramatic momentum does.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
The Mosquito Coast1986
Based on Paul Theroux's novel, this follows another obsessive Western man drawn into the depths of Central America. A masterclass in how ideology and restlessness can consume a life, with Harrison Ford in rare, unsettling form.
But It's bleak and claustrophobic rather than poetic. The protagonist's fanaticism becomes genuinely difficult to watch.
The Last Temptation of Christ1988
Like Herzog's film, it's a long spiritual meditation by a visionary artist examining faith, suffering and the pull of impossible desires. Scorsese's Herzog—equally willing to provoke and unsettle in service of truth.
But It's 155 minutes of theological argument, not narrative. Many find it glacial or even blasphemous.
Fitzcarraldo1982
Herzog's own masterpiece about obsession and impossible quests in the Amazon. An actual river steamboat hauled over a mountain; no metaphor. The truest document of artistic madness ever made into cinema.
But The production history overshadows the film itself. Some find it slow, and Herzog's humanism can feel cold.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
The Ballad of Little Jo1993
Both challenge the Romantic myth of the male wanderer. Herzog treats Chatwin as a saint; Greenwald treats her subject as a trickster who used performance to survive—different apotheosis, same question about who we are when unwatched.
A historical film about a woman who dressed as a man to survive as a lone prospector in the 1880s frontier. A radical reframing of the wanderer myth—survival as drag, solitude as liberation, written and directed by Maggie Greenwald.
But It's deliberately unglamorous and moves with deliberate slowness. The revisionist take may frustrate Western genre fans.
More like this (5)
In a Lonely Place1950
A writer adrift in 1950s Los Angeles, charming and volatile, undone by his own nature. Bogart gives the performance of his life—a portrait of the cost of constant motion through human relationships.
But It's a noir that refuses to comfort you. The ending will sit badly if you came for answers.
True Grit2010
A stubborn girl and a broken man traverse frontier America seeking justice and understanding. The Coens capture wanderlust as both exhilarating and punishing, with exquisite language throughout.
But It's uncompromising about loss. The young lead can feel precocious to some viewers.
Stalker1979
Tarkovsky's masterpiece about a guide leading two men through a mysterious zone toward a room of wishes. A slow, hypnotic meditation on desire, faith, and what we actually want when we finally arrive.
But It moves at the pace of glacial ice. Patience is not optional; it's the entire point.
Rogue Male1976
A British thriller about a man hunted across continents after an assassination attempt. Tense and smart, with a protagonist whose flight becomes as much about self-discovery as survival.
But It's a period production—the pacing and style feel dated, and some find it overly procedural.
Lightning Over Water1980
Herzog visiting Chatwin with the rucksack is the seed of this film: two artists meeting at mortality's edge, one bearing witness as the other departs. Both ask what we owe to the dying, and what we carry forward.
Nicholas Ray's final film, directed with Wim Wenders as Ray was dying of cancer. A man and a camera documenting the approach of death with brutal tenderness. Not a documentary, not quite a film—something more intimate.
But It's barely a narrative. Watching someone die on camera, even gently framed, is an ordeal. Some find it self-indulgent.
People
Cast
Werner HerzogSelf - Interviewer and Narrator (voice)
Bruce ChatwinSelf (archive footage)- Karin EberhardSelf
- Glenn MorrisonSelf
- Marcus WheelerSelf
- Peter BartlettSelf
- Robin GranitesSelf
Directing
- Werner HerzogDirector
Writing
- Werner HerzogWriter
Production
- Richard BrightExecutive Producer
- Lucki StipetićProducer
- Steve O'HaganProducer
- Lisa PhelanProduction Executive
- Mandy WellerProduction Manager