The White Diamond

Herzog used the dense rain forests of Guyana for his documentary. This is primarily a story about a loss, tragedy, but also about possible victory. The human element in the story is Graham Dorrington, a British eccentric and an aviation engineer who decided to develop a special type of aircraft the design of which is based on the dirigibles of early 1920s – an aircraft almost silent and of low speed. Twelve years earlier, his friend Dieter Plage was killed in a similar aircraft. For him, the major motive of this enterprise is to get over his friend’s death, or to attach a meaning to it. Herzog tells a parallel story of a great tragedy of a local Rastafarian who works in a diamond mine, whose mother and eight brothers emigrated to Spain and have not been in touch with him for years.

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"I chose this film for the opening of the first ZagrebDox with the desire to show the audience, which was until then mostly used to BBC and National Geographic documentaries, the strength of an authorial, poetic, dramatic, feature-length documentary. The story, as is often the case with Herzog, is about the clash of man’s dream and the power of nature. In this case, it is British zeppelin builder Graham Dorrington embarking on a journey to the giant Kaieteur Falls in the heart of Guyana, hoping to fly his “ship“ above the treetops. But this modern Icarus also carries a secret that is gradually revealed in the film – a similar expedition ended in disaster when Dorrington’s friend Dieter Plage crashed to his death. With outstanding cinematography, accompanied by a great soundtrack by Ernst Reijseger and Eric Spitzer, this film in many aspects determined the direction in which ZagrebDox was moving and developing. For twenty years!" 

- Nenad Puhovski