Werner Herzog Goes on a Pachyderm Quest

In films like Grizzly Man, Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, Werner Herzog has been drawn to obsessive men whose hubris tricks them into believing they can tame nature, only to find nature resistant to human control. South African conservation biologist Dr. Steve Boyes is a worthy addition to that canon of driven eccentrics, his background in environmental science never excluding the philosophical and spiritual reflections of an unabashed dreamer.

In Ghost Elephants, Herzog accompanies Boyes to a remote highland plateau in Angola in search of a possibly mythical herd of giant elephants, which turns out to be exactly what you want the peripatetic, eternally curious German iconoclast to be doing.

National Geographic, which has an established association with Boyes, acquired streaming rights to the doc on the eve of its premiere at the Venice Film Festival — where Herzog was awarded a Golden Lion for Career Achievement. It will be available to stream on Disney+ and Hulu in 2026.

The starting point is the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., where the largest elephant ever recorded is on display in taxidermy form, officially named — with questionable taste — the Fénykövi elephant, after the Hungarian hunter who shot and killed it in 1955. More affectionately, it’s known at the museum as Henry, an 11-ton mammal Boyes believes must have been at least 100 years old when it died.

For a decade, Boyes has pursued his theory that the mega-pachyderm belongs to a subspecies that still exists in an elusive herd wandering the elevated wetlands of Angola, a sparsely inhabited area roughly the size of England and reachable only with great perseverance. According to Boyes, it’s one of the most biodiverse habitats on the planet, and every species that he and his team have discovered there is unique to the area.

The goal of the mission is to obtain DNA from the Angolan elephants and return to the Smithsonian for analysis, hoping to trace a link back to Henry. It’s not entirely clear how Boyes arrived at his theories, but Herzog is more interested in the Sisyphean quest — he likens it to going after the white whale — than the science.

In the characteristically idiosyncratic commentary that has become a signature of his nonfiction work, Herzog muses on Boyes and his ghost elephants: “It doesn’t matter to him if they exist or are a dream. Maybe that’s the future of all animals. To be a dream. To be a memory.”

Punctuating the doc with enchanting underwater footage of elephants splashing around bathing, or with dazzling fast-motion sequences of the enveloping night skies, Herzog tracks the months of preparation for the journey, the long trek through the almost impassable peatlands — first in 4WDs, then on motorcycles for 100 miles and on foot for the last 30 miles from their base camp — and the arrival at their destination.

Their first stop is Namibia, where they sign up indigenous hunter-gatherers of the Kalahari, the San Bushmen. They observe an all-night dance ritual where the master trackers go into a trance state, allowing the spirits of the elephants to enter them.

It quickly becomes clear that Herzog is just as fascinated by the poetic and magical side of the quest as the outcome — probably more so. Being among what’s believed to be the first people on Earth, from whom we are all descended, fires up his imagination but also his droll, whimsical side.

Watching a tribal elder sitting on the cracked ground fixing a stringed instrument while chickens scurry around him, the director chides himself for it but can’t help romanticizing: “I feel it cannot get better than this.” He also notes without mockery that while the ancestral way of life prevails in this egalitarian society, it’s not unusual to see a bushman on a cellphone.

The convoy expands with the addition of Angolan trackers from the Luchazi tribe, known for their extensive knowledge of the ecosystem, particularly around the Okavango River basin. They refer to the expedition’s plateau destination as the “Source of Life.”

They also talk of the legacy of the 27-year Angolan Civil War, during which countless elephants, hippos and other majestic creatures were gunned down for sport or blown up by landmines. Footage from the 1966 Italian documentary Africa Addio, of a herd of elephants being felled by both ground hunters and sharpshooters in helicopters, is distressing to watch.

The final section may prove anticlimactic for some, given the fleeting images captured of elephants believed to have inhabited the highlands for 5,000 years. But there’s enough forensic evidence of them to obtain the required DNA samples, from dung piles or tree markings where they scratch themselves, leaving behind traces of hair. Boyes estimates from one set of markings that the elephant stands at least 11 feet tall.

In his inimitably deadpan, cryptic fashion, Herzog comments: “Steve would have to live with his success.” What comes after the realization of a dream, he seems to be asking. The director maintains a degree of ambivalence about the wild-eyed Boyes and his need to unravel nature’s mysteries. But the kinship of fellow travelers seems apparent in the willingness of both director and subject to think outside a purely scientific frame.

This aspect comes to the fore in a visit to the tribal king of the area, from whom permission must be granted to track the elephants. With lilting cadences, the king shares the origin myth of his Nkangala people, that a small elephant shed its skin while bathing in the river and a woman emerged, who married and procreated with his ancestors. The inference is that beyond just co-existing with the magnificent beast, the tribe are its descendants.

Boyes nods in vigorous agreement with the tribal belief that the disappearance of the elephants would be a harbinger of the disappearance of human life. That lingering note of myth and melancholy typifies the ways in which Ghost Elephants steps outside the boundaries of science-based nature docs. It makes for a fantastic story.