Lothar Herzog

Director

Lothar Herzog stands for precise auteur cinema with a clear visual signature between documentary observation and atmospheric condensation. Born in Freiburg and raised in Paris, the director consistently works with real locations and concentrated character arcs that intertwine political and personal dimensions. His feature film debut 1986 (2019, directed by Lothar Herzog) follows a student in Minsk whose trips to the contaminated zone of Chernobyl become moral and existential border crossings. The world premiere took place at the Zurich Film Festival, followed by Hof, Cottbus, Minsk, and Slamdance, among others; the German theatrical release was in September 2021. For 1986, Herzog received the Hof Gold Prize for Best Director at the International Hof Film Festival, and the production also won an award at the First Steps Awards. Herzog's working method combines lean production resources with precise visual dramaturgy: shot on 16mm, elliptically edited, carried by a physical perception of space that intertwines landscape, history, and the present. The response from the trade press and curators confirms the film's significance in the current German-language arthouse context; in addition, its television broadcast on Arte documents its lasting visibility beyond the festival circuit. Overall, a profile emerges that combines artistic independence, international festival presence, and continuous distribution—thus marking a clear position in contemporary cinema.

Films on Sooner

1986

2019

77 mins

Drama

A young woman ventures into the deadly beauty of the Chernobyl exclusion zone to save her father from prison.