German filmmaker Werner Herzog, known for his unconventional storytelling and memorable characters, has voiced skepticism about the term "neurodivergence" and related modern psychological concepts, calling them "political correctness" during his recent appearance at the Venice Film Festival. Herzog, who has directed films featuring intense, singular characters like Aguirre, Fitzcarraldo, and Timothy Treadwell, has brought his latest film, Bucking Fastard, to the festival. The film stars real-life sisters Kate and Rooney Mara as Jean and Joan Holbrooke, two siblings who share the same body, speak in unison, dress identically, and have the same interests. The characters fall for their aging neighbor, played by Orlando Bloom, and later seek revenge when he marries another woman, launching a whimsical journey to dig a tunnel linking a cave in County Sligo to the Orkney Islands. While modern psychiatrists might observe behaviors that align with conditions like autism or ADHD, Herzog has dismissed such labels. "I just can't hear it—it dusts out of my ears," he said. He argues that the term "neurodivergence" implies some sort of clinical deviation, but he sees the characters in his film as "dead centre," meaning perfectly normal. The story is loosely inspired by the real-life relationship between Freda and Greta Chaplin, twin sisters from York whom Herzog met in the 1980s. Unlike many of his previous works, Bucking Fastard features characters who are not only complex but also vengeful and destructive, adding a new dimension to Herzog's storytelling. He described the film as lively and full of inner life, bringing excitement and joy to the narrative. Herzog also directed a long sequence inside a large karst cave system near Postojna, Slovenia, which he described in reverent terms, comparing it to the French subterranean landscapes featured in his 2010 film Cave of Forgotten Dreams. He called it "a landscape of the soul, a landscape of the imagination." Herzog has recently started an Instagram account at the urging of his youngest son, who encouraged him to engage more with his audience. However, Herzog still does not own a mobile phone and has not yet participated in the online content-creation trend. Last year, Herzog had a major retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, where the audience was predominantly young, in contrast to a previous Jean-Luc Godard retrospective, which attracted an older crowd.