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Poster for Queen of the Desert
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Released
2015 · FILM

Queen of the Desert

A fiercely independent British explorer and scholar navigates the treacherous deserts and political landscapes of the Middle East, shaping the modern world while battling the constraints of her time.

“One woman can change the course of history”

Directed by
Werner Herzog
Written by
Werner Herzog
Runtime
128 min
AdventureBiographyDrama
Streaming on
  • The Criterion Channel

Synopsis

A chronicle of Gertrude Bell's life, a traveler, writer, archaeologist, explorer, cartographer, and political attaché for the British Empire in the Near and Middle East at the dawn of the twentieth century. Her knowledge of the tribal leaders is used by the British to establish the Kingdoms of Iraq, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Production Designer
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 21

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 ZeitlingerScored by Klaus BadeltDesigned by Ulrich Bergfelder

Box Office

2015 · Box office

📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.1× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$1.6M

Budget$15.0M
Worldwide gross$1.6M
break-even (2.5×)

Also known as

  • Königin der Wüstede

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