We haven't seen a real volcanic event at least in 74,000 years - [Mount Toba] in Indonesia, in Sumatra, where the crater itself is 100 kilometers across. It was so monumental, what happened, that for a very long time the entire atmosphere of our planet was darkened. It's not the lava and the heat per se; it's the obscuring of the entire atmosphere, and it made it very difficult for the human race to survive.

You are in a place that has not been seen for tens of thousands of years, because it was so sealed off. There is such silence that when you hold your breath you can hear your own heartbeat. Everything is so fresh that you have the sensation that the painters have merely retreated deeper into the dark and that they are looking at you.

Everyone who makes films has to be an athlete to a certain degree because cinema does not come from abstract academic thinking; it comes from your knees and thighs.

In a way, I managed to get the deepest things, the best things out of people. That's why I'm a filmmaker. If you don't have it in you, you'd better do something else.

Netflix knew I was going to North Korea and Ethiopia and Iceland. They saw the film and liked it and that was that.

It's very strange, for example, in North Korea where the volcano at the Chinese border is some sort of the mythical birthplace of the Korean people.

When you look at any of my films you will immediately be able to tell this is a [Werner] Herzog film. Even if you didn't have any credits, in two minutes flat you would know.