Although a self-described eccentric, Werner Herzog always rejected the characterization of his protagonists as outsiders or marginalized lunatics. They are not the crazies – it’s society which has cast them aside or simply forgotten about them. In The Land of Silence and Darkness this is often literally true, as in the case of a deaf-blind man who opts to live in a cowshed, or of young Viktor, who has been left to the mercy of unimaginable isolation his entire life. Some of them, like the remarkably empathetic Fini Straubinger, never give up, however, using their indomitable will to convince society that deaf-blind people are here to stay and that they must be taken into account rather than left to exist forgotten and unloved.