Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald is an opera-loving fortune hunter who dreams of bringing opera to a remote trading post in the Peruvian jungle. With the help of Madam Molly, his crew, and an indigenous tribe, he ventures into the wilderness to access the riches of unexploited rubber territory.

Winner of the Best Director award at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, this is one of cinema’s most insane undertakings—the crew literally had to drag a steamboat up a mountain. Werner Herzog’s crowning masterwork is a sweeping ode to mankind’s quest to leave a footprint on an infinite world.