"A computer won’t be able to create a film as good as mine for at least another 4,500 years".

"A computer won’t be able to create a film as good as mine for at least another 4,500 years".

Mohsen Mahmoodzadeh

When a local laborer named Dorem Clery dies under mysterious circumstances, Werner Herzog[1] travels to Getunkirchenburg to investigate his mysterious death. But Herzog, the story's narrator, is not what he seems.

This is the story of "About a Hero"; a docu-drama film that had its world premiere as the opening film at IDFA, one of the most important documentary film festivals in the world, on November 15, 2024.

"About a Hero" is a fictional narrative that happens to reflect Herzog's thoughts, mixed with a series of conversations with artists, philosophers, and scientists who ponder the notions of originality, creativity, art, and the immortality of works of art in the age of artificial intelligence.

"a computer won’t be able to create a film as good as mine for at least another 4,500 years." It was this statement by Werner Herzog that first got Polish artist Piotr Winiewicz thinking. "Can a computer write a script?" The emergence of an amazing phenomenon called artificial intelligence raises the question: "How might cooperation between humans and machines look like in the future?

Polish artist and filmmaker Piotr Winiewicz goes to Werner Herzog to challenge his views on art, creativity, and the role of computer technologies in artistic creation. Following this challenge, Winiewicz and his team create a software called "Kaspar" with the goal of writing a screenplay based on Herzog's ideas. Herzog allows Winiewicz to continue his project and a movie called "About a Hero" is made; a fictional documentary based on a script written by an artificial intelligence trained on the works of Werner Herzog.

Rikke Tambo Andersen, the film's producer and CEO of the Danish company Tambo Film, said this about Herzog's opinion before the film was made: “He knows the film and he approves of it”, “He doesn’t believe that AI will succeed but he wishes us good luck!”

In his film "About a Hero," Winiewicz explores the extent to which artificial intelligence can be used to make a movie like Werner Herzog's films. To explore this, he programmed Kaspar, an artificial intelligence that could write a script based on Werner Herzog's mind. "I hope people will be scared," the car says at Vinevich's request. I want them to feel like they are in a horror movie. I want them to understand that the future of movies belongs to cars.

"About a Hero" is part of Winiewicz's larger project, Kaspar AI, named after Kaspar Hauser (1812-1833), a German historical figure whose life story inspired Herzog to make "The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser" in 1974.

In an interview with Variety, director Winiewicz says, “This project was never meant as a challenge to what Herzog said, but rather an opportunity to provoke existential reflections regarding our inherent sense of superiority that ultimately lead to technophobia. Because, if at this stage we can’t really tell the difference between machine-made and man-made, are we then as complex as we think we are? Ultimately, I want ‘About a Hero’ to trigger a discussion on topics such as authorship, originality, risks of dis- and misinformation and what our role is in a world where we face the risk of being decentralized.”

Here you can watch the official teaser of "About a Hero".

[1] Werner Herzog is a German filmmaker, actor, opera director and author who is regarded as one of the leading figures of modern German cinema. He is the creator of acclaimed works such as "Aguirre, the Wrath of God", "Fitzcarraldo", "Grizzly Man", "Encounters at the End of the World" and "Cave of Forgotten Dreams".