Werner Herzog directs Kate and Rooney Mara as tunnel-digging twins in Bucking Fastard, his most unhinged true-story drama yet. Prepare yourself.
Bucking Fastard is the kind of movie title that makes you do a double-take, and the film itself might be Werner Herzog’s most unhinged project since he threatened to kill Klaus Kinski and then filmed himself eating a shoe. The legendary German director has assembled Kate Mara and Rooney Mara for their first on-screen collaboration as twin sisters who speak in unison, love the same man, and decide to dig a tunnel through an entire mountain range.
The film is based on the true story of British identical twins Freda and Greta Chaplin, who gained notoriety in 1980s Yorkshire after a restraining order was filed against them by a man they both became involved with. Herzog first mentioned this project in the “Unrealized Projects” chapter of his 2022 memoir Every Man for Himself and God Against All, which tells you exactly how long this idea has been percolating in his singular brain.
The title Bucking Fastard comes from a simultaneous verbal slip the sisters made in court, because of course Herzog would build his entire marketing campaign around a profanity uttered by twins.
Kate and Rooney play Jean and Joan Holbrooke, sisters so close they share dreams and make identical slips of the tongue. Orlando Bloom plays their rowdy ex-lover Gareth Mulroney, while Domhnall Gleeson portrays Timothy, a government-issued social worker tasked with helping them adapt to modern life after they become tabloid sensations. The plot follows the twins as they search for an imaginary land called the Orkneys, where true love is supposedly possible, by literally excavating through mountains in Ireland.
Bucking Fastard True Story Twist
Principal photography wrapped in late April 2025 after shooting in Dublin, Sligo, and Slovenia. Herzog reunited with his regular cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger, composer Ernst Reijseger, and editor Marco Capalbo, ensuring that Bucking Fastard carries the same hypnotic visual and sonic DNA as Fitzcarraldo and Grizzly Man. The project is produced by Clara Wu Tsai, Ariel Leon Isacovitch, and Agnes Chu, with HanWay Films handling worldwide sales.
The film was offered a world premiere at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival in the non-competitive official selection lineup, which means the arthouse crowd will get to experience this madness before the rest of us.
What do you get when you combine Werner Herzog, twin sisters, and a court-recorded profanity? Bucking Fastard, apparently. Kate Mara told reporters that she and her sister had been looking for a project to do together for years, and finding one where they are literal equals who speak in unison was almost too perfect to pass up.
If you have ever wanted to see two Hollywood sisters speak in perfect harmony while committing geological crimes against the Irish landscape, Bucking Fastard is your film. Herzog has spent his career chasing obsession to its logical extreme, and watching twin sisters dig toward an imaginary paradise feels like the perfect culmination of everything he has ever believed about human folly.
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