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Poster for Little Dieter Needs to Fly
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Released
1997 · FILM

Little Dieter Needs to Fly

In 1966, Dieter Dengler was shot down over Laos, captured, and, down to 85 pounds, escaped.

Directed by
Written by
Runtime
77 min
BiographyDocumentaryDrama
Streaming on
  • Prime Video

Synopsis

Three decades after German-American pilot Dieter Dengler was shot down over Laos, he returns to the places where he was held prisoner during the early years of the Vietnam War. Accompanied by director Werner Herzog, Dengler describes in unusually candid detail his captivity, the friendships he made, and his daring escape. Not willing to stop there, Herzog even persuades his subject to re-enact certain tortures, with the help of some willing local villagers.

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 8

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Joe BiniShot by Peter Zeitlinger

Also known as

  • Flucht aus Laosde
  • El pequeño Dieter necesita volares
  • Petit Dieter doit volerfr

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