Robert Eggers on Werwulf and his career in film: “Everybody is a bit of an island”
The director of The Witch, The Lighthouse and Nosferatu reflected on folklore, filmmaking and creative partnership at an LFF Screen Talk, where audiences were treated to the first footage from his next nightmare, Werwulf.
Presenting Robert Eggers as “a maker of myths, an interpreter of folklore, a creator of so many nightmares for all of us to enjoy,” host Anna Bogutskaya neatly captured the director’s supernatural preoccupations. But discussing Eggers’ macabre works at his Screen Talk at the 70th BFI London Film Festival brought him evident delight. The talk offered insight into the director’s upcoming film, Werwulf, and an exclusive preview of its opening minutes.
Clad in black, Eggers remained poised throughout the event. At times, he amused the crowd with flashes of dry, self-deprecating humour, a sharp contrast to the unsettling atmosphere of his films. Since his feature debut, The Witch (2015), he has often returned to the same collaborators. Asked whether his approach has evolved, Eggers said, “I don’t think so, especially working with repeat collaborators. I feel like I’m generally better at articulating what’s in my imagination and getting it on the screen.” He joked, “I’m kind of doing the same stuff… every time. For better or for worse.” Bogutskaya assured him it was for the better.
Eggers believes these lasting relationships inspire creative freedom. Over time, he explained, “our taste becomes intermingled and becomes one”. With such mutual trust, “you can immediately jump further… take greater risks and reach for something even more distant, because the first steps are out of the way.”
Eggers appreciates a similar commitment from his actors. “I’m just interested in people who care about the work,” he said. “As long as it’s about the work and it’s not about anything else, then we get along. We can get to work.” This is how it was the first time he met Willem Dafoe. Despite the actor’s “gigantic stature,” Eggers recalled, “we could just talk, because it’s about the work.”
The director first worked with Dafoe on The Lighthouse (2019). For Eggers, the rehearsals with Dafoe and Robert Pattinson for that film proved his method hasn’t changed: “It’s the same thing I was doing when I was a kid doing community theatre.”
The Lighthouse, which charts the mental decline of two lighthouse keepers, also spurred an impish remark from the director: “Nothing good can happen when two men are trapped in a giant phallus. That symbolism is there, whether you want it or not.”
Bogutskaya also highlighted Eggers’ interest in outsiders. “Everybody is a bit of an island,” he observed, referencing Edward Scissorhands and the ‘Elephant Man’ John Merrick as examples. “We understand feeling like we can’t fit.”
Eggers’s curiosity for marginalised characters also includes the women in his films, from Anya Taylor-Joy’s Thomasin in The Witch to Lily-Rose Depp’s Ellen in Nosferatu (2024). “We have women who are exploding out of the social constraints of their society,” he noted.
Eggers also touched on his fondness for immersive locations. He spoke enthusiastically about being able to build and design the sets for his films, saying “it’s like being in my own Disney World.” But he stressed the environments were “for the actors”. Discussing Nosferatu, he said that some exterior shots in that film featured a real Transylvanian castle, with “virtually no changes” needed.
A clip from The Northman (2022) prompted Eggers to jokingly rue a new ban on having chickens on set with fog machines. “I should just retire!” he teased. “It was really hard on Werwulf to sort that out… One day, I was like, ‘I know this sounds crazy, but can we put a teacup chihuahua in a chicken costume?’”
The lead in Werwulf was written with Aaron Taylor-Johnson in mind: “There’s no one who can play Aaron’s role… I wrote it for him… The things he does in the film with his body are incredibly athletic.” Taylor-Johnson is another returning collaborator, as is Icelandic screenwriter Sjón, who previously worked with Eggers on The Northman. The director credited Sjón as “actually creative… he’s able to bring a lot more ideas to the table than I can.”
Eggers outlined the writing process with Sjón for Werwulf quite simply: “I was like, ‘this is the feeling, this is the atmosphere… help me tie this together into a full story.’”
Although Eggers downplayed his creative abilities, the opening minutes of Werwulf, screened near the end of the conversation, drew emphatic applause. The scene depicted a visceral transformation of man into beast, as Taylor-Johnson is seen convulsing and vomiting in a barn. Plot details remain undisclosed, but the film is set in 14th-century England, where a town is haunted by the voracious monster of the title.
Asked what comes after Werwulf, Eggers referenced his recently announced Romeo and Juliet project with the characteristically cryptic answer: “Suicidal teenagers”.
Robert Eggers was speaking at a Screen Talk at the 70th BFI London Film Festival.