Werner Herzog's 'Bucking Fastard' Has Kate and Rooney Mara Playing a Pair of Very Odd Sisters

Joanie and Jeanie are not twins. While the Holbrooke sisters are not identical in looks, they are in practically every other detail of their lives. They dress the same, talk in unison, share dreams, fall in love with the same man, and eventually receive the same restraining order to stay the hell away from him. The world is not built for their kind. They may have to find another place.

Warner Herzog returns to feature films with Bucking Fastard, inspired by a real pair of sisters who seemed to share a brain. It’s all decidedly Herzog-esque, a typical topic for the man who has long been enamoured with the off-kilter and antisocial. While Herzog has embraced his elder statesman-slash-meme status in recent years, he’s retained his fascination with the obsessive. Herzogian heroes are usually committed if misguided adventurers with impossible quests that defy explanation and leave them cut off from society. Consider Fitzcarraldo’s maniacal quest to build an opera house in the middle of the Amazon, or Aguirre’s search for El Dorado, or the very real Timothy Treadwell’s dream of a utopian life among the wild bears of Alaska. Jeanie and Joanie’s dreams are not quite so grand or suicidal. They just want love, peace, and to dig a tunnel through the hills of Ireland until they reach the Orkney Islands. Is that too much to ask?

Real-life sisters Kate and Rooney Mara have been tasked with giving a joint performance, moving and speaking together like the twins from The Shining if they did more mundane household tasks. They mine a lot of humour out of this gimmick (the title refers to a slip-up they screamed in court.) It is truly entertaining to see the sisters, without hesitation, walk and talk and scream as one. There are great moments of physical comedy in their joint endeavours, including one scene where they futilely try to open a can of sardines together. They’re evenly matched as performers, never letting one or the other tip the scales in their favour.

The Maras have a lot of heavy lifting to do because Herzog presents their dynamic as is and offers no explanation or insight into why they are like this. There’s no tragic backstory, nor do the sisters ever question or push back against their curious connection, even when their kindly but baffled social worker (Domhnall Gleeson) tries to intervene. They dress like ’50s housewives but live in a world with Instagram and seemingly have no idea how the internet works. This opacity may frustrate some. Certainly, it’s a lot to ask from the audience when everything is centred on this pair, and you realize this sameness is the point.

Plot-wise, do not expect a tight narrative. The film is as unwieldy as the Holbrooks are rigid, drifting from event to event with little connective tissue. It opens in court, with the sisters testifying in unison as they face separation from the fuckboi they adore. A good Samaritan sends them off to Dublin, where their minor infamy follows them and gross dudes won’t leave them alone. A kindly aunt invites them to the postcard-perfect Irish countryside to find some solace amid the wilds of nature. By the second act, the film drifts into a kind of surreal aura that makes you wonder how real anything that preceded it was. How very Werner.

And it’s all rather sweet, devoid of the bleakness or sick edge that often permeates Herzog’s work. This might be the most he’s ever loved his protagonists, openly and without cynicism. There’s affection for the Holbrookes and their misguided hopes (the film is dedicated to David Lynch, and much of it does feel like a cut subplot of Twin Peaks.) It’s not enough of a foundation to hold up a 109-minute film, however. It needed to be weirder, more caustic, but the sweetness has its appeal. “Everyone should dig a hole through a mountain,” the sisters tell us. Maybe they’re right.

Bucking Fastard had its North American premiere at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival. It currently does not have a release date.