The opening shot of Aguirre: The Wrath of God tracks the descent of a group of conquistadors into an Amazon river valley as they search for El Dorado, the fabled city of gold. That shot becomes a metaphor for Aguirre’s descent into madness as he risks the lives of his men in his obsessive pursuit of wealth and power. Aguirre marks the first collaboration between director Werner Herzog and mercurial leading man Klaus Kinski, a relationship that involved death threats between the two and was chronicled in the documentary My Best Fiend. – Tyler J. Petty