“If you haven’t seen the deaf and blind Fini Straubinger, you shouldn’t speak about my films.” With these words Werner Herzog elevates his early documentary to the status of ‘must see.’ His exploration of the ‘Land of Silence and Darkness’ is touching - as is the way he gets close to his protagonist, 56-year-old, Fini Straubinger, whose only means of communication with the world is sign language. In this portrait of a fascinating and imperturbable heroine – who seeks out her fate companions like a saviour and gives them courage - real and ecstatic moments meld together, as they so often do in the work of the Bavarian director. In the famous closing scene a deaf and blind man puts his arms around a tree. Moritz Holfelder