In winter of 1974, German director Werner Herzog walked from Munich to Paris to see his dying friend, film critic Lotte Eisner, believing that if he made the journey on foot she would somehow be alive when he got there. In summer 2005, with a dream of meeting the man who had inspired him to make movies, filmmaker Linas Phillips made his own pilgrimage, walking 1,200 miles from Seattle, Washington to Herzog’s Los Angeles home.

120 miles into his journey, a born-again Christian girl pulls over to offer Linas three things: bottled water, a psychic prediction that problems await him down the road, and advice – to hold onto his dream. Three miles later he gets a call from Herzog, who is away on a film shoot and tells him, “if you want to walk, do it for some other reason.” Braving traffic, shin splints and highway patrol, Linas continues for sixty days, haunted by doubt and clinging to hope that circumstance will bring him face to face with Herzog after all. Meanwhile, he meets one marginal roadside character after another, lining up an unforgettably powerful cast of characters.

There is Scorpio Johnnie Angel, who began walking thirteen years ago in Tallahassee, Florida, when his wife and daughters were killed in a convenience store hold-up. Eli, a nursing student, walked from Los Angeles to the Oregon Coast, intending to kill himself but finding a new start instead. Brian, an itinerant chainsaw carver in the Redwoods, tells the story of how he murdered his girlfriend’s brother eleven years ago.

Punctuated by Herzog’s emails, voicemails and excerpts of audio commentary by Herzog and his colleague Norman Hill, these stories and Linas’ own powerhouse narration make Walking to Werner as much a testament to human vulnerability and redemption as a chronicle of the 1,200-mile quest to meet Werner Herzog.