Venice just dropped one of its most stacked competition lineups in years, and buried inside it is a film that feels almost designed for the Lido's taste in the strange and obsessive.
Werner Herzog's Bucking Fastard, starring Kate Mara and Rooney Mara, will world premiere in the main competition at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival in September. HanWay Films has now released a clip from the drama roughly six weeks ahead of that debut. The scene finds the Mara sisters speaking together in perfect unison as they testify in court. It is, by any measure, a deeply unusual piece of filmmaking.
The film is based on the true story of inseparable twin sisters Joan and Jean, who live on the fringes of society. Herzog first mentioned the project in his 2022 memoir Every Man for Himself and God Against All, describing it as being about British identical twin sisters Freda and Greta Chaplin, who gained notoriety in the 1980s for having a restraining order placed on them by a man they both became involved with. The title refers to a synchronized verbal slip the sisters made in court.
On screen, the characters go by Jean and Joan Holbrooke. Set in both the contemporary urban world and the untamed wilds of Ireland, the sisters are assigned a government-issued social worker, Timothy, played by Domhnall Gleeson, who attempts to help them adapt to modern life after they become a tabloid sensation. In search of an imaginary land where true love is possible, they begin digging a tunnel through an entire mountain range. Orlando Bloom also stars as their rowdy ex-lover, Gareth Maloney.
The film marks the first time the sisters have worked together. Kate Mara, an Emmy nominee known for House of Cards, and two-time Oscar nominee Rooney Mara, celebrated for Carol and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, have orbited similar circles for over a decade without ever sharing a frame.
Speaking about the collaboration, Kate said: "We've been looking for something to do together for a while. The first hurdle was finding a filmmaker that we both like, and while we like a lot of the same things, we both had an equal excitement about working with Werner. We're playing total equals who speak in unison and do everything the same. They dream the same in the film, and they're so in sync. We could have never imagined finding two roles in a film where we're literally equals in so many ways, and it was just so perfect."
In a separate IndieWire interview while promoting Friendship, Kate added: "It was the most special experience working with Werner, who was wild and fantastical. He's everything you want him to be. He just knows exactly what he wants. And then working with my sister was equally as much of a dream."
Herzog, now 83, has hardly been idle. A newly restored 6K version of Cave of Forgotten Dreams screened at the Telluride Film Festival last year, shortly after he received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at Venice. Bucking Fastard is his first narrative feature since Family Romance, LLC in 2019. He's also developing his first animated film, The Twilight World, with a target release of 2028.
Speaking publicly about the film for the first time after shooting wrapped, Herzog said: "Bucking Fastard is a film that, for me, completes a circle in an operatic triptych with my previous films, Fitzcarraldo and Grizzly Man. We cannot see the world as Jean and Joan Holbrooke see it, but we do see how the world reacts to them — through the courts and the press, through those that want to help and those who want to use them, through the eyes of beasts both tame and wild, and even through their own echoes in the core of the earth."
Principal photography took place at Dublin's Pigeon House film studios and around the town of Naas, with additional scenes filmed in Slovenia. Peter Zeitlinger served as cinematographer, with Ernst Reijseger composing the score. The finished film runs 109 minutes.
Herzog initially turned down Cannes after being denied a competition slot, which would have kept the Maras ineligible for acting prizes. Venice obliged with a main competition berth instead. HanWay Films is handling international sales, while Gersh manages domestic rights. The film is still hunting for a U.S. distributor. That search will likely heat up fast once Venice audiences get a look at whatever this wildly singular project turns out to be.
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