The film director has been honoured for his works.

Filmmaker Werner Herzog was honoured with a special award on Wednesday at the Venice Film Festival.

CBI News reports that Herzog is an eclectic risk-taker whose monumental works often explore humankind's conflict with nature.

The 82-year-old, who helped launch New German Cinema in the 1960s, received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement ahead of the debut of his latest documentary, "Ghost Elephants," about a lost herd in Angola, on Thursday.

He was handed a special winged Golden Lion statue by "The Godfather" director and friend Francis Ford Coppola who praised the German's "limitless creativity".

"I have always tried to strive for something that goes deeper beyond what you normally see in movie theatres, a deep form of poetry that is possible in cinema," Herzog said in an acceptance speech.

Herzog has made a series of documentaries in recent years, many in exotic locales, while continuing to make film appearances, including cameos in "The Simpsons".

Who is Herzog?

Herzog was born in Munich in 1942. He began experimenting with film at age 15, making his name as a writer, producer and director.

A long and contentious collaboration with German screen icon Klaus Kinski resulted in epic films like 1972's "Aguirre, the Wrath of God", about the search for El Dorado in the Amazon jungle, or 1982's "Fitzcarraldo", about a mad dreamer hellbent on building an opera house in the jungle -- in which Herzog had the extras haul a huge steamship up a hill.

Other films include 1979's gothic horror film "Nosferatu the Vampyre", the 2005 documentary "Grizzly Man" and "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New.