Aguirre, the Wrath of God

Aguirre, the Wrath of God is a 1972 film directed by Werner Herzog and shot on location in the Amazon basin as a West German, Mexican and Peruvian co-production, starring Klaus Kinski as a Spanish conquistador who seizes command of a doomed expedition searching the jungle for the legendary city of El Dorado. Loosely based on the historical sixteenth-century expedition of Lope de Aguirre, though Herzog treated most of the plot's specific events as invention, the film follows the party's descent into isolation, mutiny and madness as the river carries them deeper into the jungle. Aguirre, the Wrath of God is widely regarded as one of Herzog's major works and one of the most acclaimed films of world cinema, and it directly influenced Francis Ford Coppola's later Apocalypse Now.