"Fortunately Oliver Herbrich doesn’t create an ideology when walking the line between fictional movie and documentary film. Herbrich’s approach is solely based on the story telling needs of the subjects. Remarkably this technique results in a combination of documentary and fictional elements. There’s one scene sequence during the “Mathias Kneissl" movie, when the gendarmerie brigade is closing in on the folk hero. The resulting police violence is reminiscent of documentary reports.

​

Vice versa his documentary films include elements of fiction. The scenes of gold diggers carrying sacks of mud uphill from their claims in the documentary “Searching for El Dorado“ reminds the viewer of monumental feature movies. This evokes a mythologization of the real life, revealing the general in the particular. One can describe Herbrich’s films as stories about human behaviour, depicting the mechanisms of reality. Reaching limits and crossing boarders is something to be taken in the literal sense in Herbrich’s oeuvre."

​

(Dieter Kosslick at retrospective in Munich)