Burden of Dreams [4K UHD] [US]

Release Date: 11/11/2025

For nearly five years, acclaimed German filmmaker Werner Herzog desperately tried to complete one of the most ambitious and difficult films of his career, Fitzcarraldo, the story of one man's attempt to build an opera house deep in the Amazon jungle. Documentary filmmaker Les Blank captured the unfolding of this production, made more perilous by Herzog's determination to shoot the most daunting scenes without models or special effects, including a sequence requiring hundreds of indigenous Peruvians to pull a full-size, 320-ton steamship over a small mountain. The result is an extraordinary document of the filmmaking process and a unique look into the single-minded mission of one of cinema's most fearless directors.

Special Features and Technical Specs:

• NEW 4K RESTORATION OF THE FILM, supervised by filmmaker Harrod Blank, director Les Blank's son, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• Alternate uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• Audio commentary featuring Les Blank, editor and sound recordist Maureen Gosling, and Fitzcarraldo director Werner Herzog
• Interview with Herzog
• Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980), a short film by Blank
• Deleted scenes
• Behind-the-scenes photos taken by Gosling
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation and English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by film scholar Paul Arthur and a book of excerpts from Blank's and Gosling's production journals