‘Bucking Fastard’: First Look at Kate Mara and Sister Rooney in Werner Herzog Feature (2025)

Bucking Fastard, the new feature film written and directed by the legendary Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man, Fitzcarraldo) and starring sisters Kate Mara (House of Cards, The Martian) and Rooney Mara (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Carol), as well as Orlando Bloom (The Lord of the Rings) and Domhnall Gleeson (Ex Machina), now has a first-look image.

It shows the sisters who star in the “deeply intertwined lead roles of Jean and Joan Holbrooke,” marking the first time they have appeared on screen together.

Bloom plays their rowdy ex-lover, Gareth Mulroney, while Gleeson portrays Timothy, their government-issued social worker/mender who is trying to help them “adapt to modern life after the two become tabloid sensations.”

A synopsis of the movie reads: “Set in both contemporary urban modernity and against the epic untamed wilds of Ireland, Bucking Fastard is about two sisters who are so close to each other that they speak in unison, love the same man, and have the same dreams. They even make the same slip of tongue in unison. In search of an imaginary land, the Orkneys – where true love is possible – they start digging a tunnel through an entire mountain range.”

The film is produced by Clara Wu Tsai (Blue Bayou), Ariel Leon Isacovitch (Theater of Thought), and Agnes Chu (Spiderhead), with Kieran Corrigan, Emanuele Moretti and Andrea Bucko.

Principal photography wrapped in late April, with HanWay Films having boarded the movie to handle worldwide sales. HanWay said it would be sharing first footage from Dublin and Sligo, Ireland and Slovenia with buyers at the Cannes film market.