08/15/2026
Werner Herzog has been a huge influence on me as a filmmaker—and that influence goes far beyond PICNIC.
It isn’t necessarily about trying to make films that look like Herzog’s films. It’s his philosophy of filmmaking that has stayed with me: the willingness to go somewhere uncomfortable, to embrace obsession, to trust an image because it feels true, and to understand that nature doesn’t care about us nearly as much as we like to believe it does.
There’s something in Herzog’s work that I’ve always responded to—the collision between beauty and madness. Civilization and chaos. Human beings desperately trying to impose meaning and order on a world that remains completely indifferent to them.
Aguirre, the Wrath of God is one of the clearest examples of that for me.
So when we began developing the visual identity for PICNIC, it felt appropriate to pay tribute to it.
This image is our homage to that iconic Aguirre artwork, reimagined through the world of PICNIC with Dionysus and Celeste.
The films themselves are obviously very different, but that Herzogian idea is buried deep in the DNA of PICNIC: people trapped inside their own desires, egos and delusions while the natural world simply continues around them.
Herzog has influenced more than this movie. He’s influenced the way I think about movies—and, in many ways, why I want to make them in the first place.
Consider this one a tip of the hat to one of the masters.
— Adam
Atomic Forge Films
