Fitzcarraldo, a foreigner obsessed with building an opera house in his Peruvian town decides that to make his dream a reality he needs to make a killing in the rubber business, so he hatches an elaborate plan: with the help of his loyal crew and an indigenous tribe, Fitzcarraldo will journey up the rivers of the Amazon with his steamship, to realise his dreams.

Inspired by a true story and one of the most chaotic and dangerous productions in movie history, Fitzcarraldo is both a confessional self-portrait of Herzog the adventuring artist and a tale of obsessive madness, the violent arguments between Herzog and his star Klaus Kinski laid bare in the story as they attempt to actually recreate the feat of hauling a full size ship over a mountain.