Werner Herzog coming to the IFC Center

This week will see Werner Herzog, the director of the acclaimed documentaries Grizzly Man and the recent Into the Abyss, discussing his new series of films centered on death row inmates and the countdown to their impending executions, at the IFC Center in New York.

Herzog will be participating in four separate screenings of his series Death Row Portraits, which previously aired as a four-part mini-series on cable television earlier this year. Each screening will include two episodes, shown in their director's cuts, to be followed by a talk led by the director himself. Each episode of Death Row Portraits includes an interview between Herzog and his subject, a convict awaiting death by lethal injection in either Florida or Texas.

During the 1970s, Herzog built his reputation on features as Aguirre, the Wrath of God, about a conquistador on a mad quest for riches. But over the past decade, the German-born auteur's best-known work has largely been non-fiction films: Along with 2005's Grizzly Man, he helmed 2010's 3-D Cave of Forgotten Dreams and 2011's Into the Abyss, which like Death Row Portraits revolved around convicts. It's clear that Herzog found something fascinating in the American penal system, and if he can talk about it with anywhere near the passion that he brings to his films, these upcoming discussions should be memorable.

Death Row Portraits is scheduled for Wednesday, April 25 and Thursday, April 26, at 6:30 and 9:30 pm. The IFC Center is located at 323 Sixth Avenue at West Third Street, New York City.