Escape from Laos
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Escape from Laos |
| Original title | Little Dieter Needs to Fly |
| Country of production | France , United Kingdom , Germany |
| original language | English , German |
| Publishing year | 1997 |
| length | 80 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Werner Herzog |
| script | Werner Herzog |
| production |
Werner Herzog Filmproduktion , Lucki Stipetic |
| camera | Peter Zeitlinger |
| cut |
Joe Bini , Glen Scantlebury , Rainer Standke |
| occupation | |
| |
Escape from Laos (original title: Little Dieter Needs to Fly , literally translated: Little Dieter needs to fly ) is a documentary produced in 1997 for the Second German Television by the German film director Werner Herzog , who also wrote the script for it.
content
The film tells the story of Dieter Dengler (1938–2001), who was born in Germany and who experienced the end of World War II in his devastated homeland as a child . When one day he saw Allied warplanes in the sky, his decision was made: he “must” become a pilot . At the age of 18 years Dengler immigrated to the United States and became a fighter pilot in the US Navy .
After completing his pilot training, he and his unit were transferred to Vietnam , where the Vietnam War was in its hot phase. During one of his first combat missions, Dengler's plane was shot down over enemy territory in Laos . Dengler survived the crash, but was captured by the Pathet Lao and imprisoned in the jungle under inhumane conditions. While in custody with other US soldiers, he was chained in a bamboo cage, starved and tortured . After a while, Dengler managed to escape. He was the only one of 500 US soldiers who had been taken prisoner in Lao who managed to escape on his own. In total, only ten US prisoners came back alive from Laos. After returning to the USA, Dengler was celebrated as a hero and wrote a book ( Escape from Laos , German flight from Laos ) about his experiences in captivity and on the run.
Awards
- 1997 Special Jury Prize of the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival
- 1998 IDA Award in the Feature Documentaries category from the International Documentary Association
- 1999 Nominated for an Emmy in the category Outstanding Non-Fiction Special
- 1999 Silver FIPA Prize from the Festival International de Programmes Audiovisuels, Biarritz
- 1999 Golden Spire of the San Francisco International Film Festival
- 1999 Gold Apple of the National Educational Media Network
- 2000 Nominated for the Sierra Award for Best Documentary at the Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards
Others
Herzog produced a 40-minute German-language version of the film for the ZDF series Höllenfahrten . For this purpose, he repeated the interviews with Dieter Dengler during the shooting, so that Dengler spoke in both English and German. The interviews conducted in German were then only found in the shortened version of the film.
In 2006, based on the documentation, Herzog produced a movie entitled Rescue Dawn with Christian Bale in the lead role as Dieter Dengler.
Web links
- Escape from Laos in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Escape from Laos at filmportal.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hell Ride: Escape from Laos (2nd episode). Full display of the title. In: Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf. 2016. On Server8.Bibl.Filmuniversität.de, accessed on December 30, 2019.