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When Alan Greenberg first showed up at Werner Herzog’s Munich home at age twenty-four, he was, according to the director, the first outsider to seek him and recognize his greatness. At the end of their first evening together, Herzog urged Greenberg to work with him on his film Heart of Glass—and everything thereafter. He clinched his plea by assuring the young American, “On the outside we’ll look like gangsters, but on the inside we’ll wear the gowns of priests.”

Every Night the Trees Disappear is an intimate chronicle of how this visionary filmmaker directed a masterwork. Greenberg’s observations, interwoven with Herzog’s original screenplay, elucidate just how unusual Herzog’s filmmaking methods could be. By hypnotizing his actors before shooting each scene, Herzog led his crew into a veritable cinematic netherworld, resulting in one of the most haunting movies ever made.

Rather than a conventional, journalistic account of how a director makes a movie, Every Night the Trees Disappear instead presents a unique vision with the feel of a novel—intimate, penetrating, and filled with mystery.