Conversations with Gorbachev are inevitably when one examines world history. German director Werner Herzog visited the former Soviet Union's last state and party chief three times with his film crew near Moscow. It was about politics and history, about glasnost and perestroika.

The result is the documentary "Meeting Gorbachev." An immensely fascinating encounter between two contemporary witnesses.

"He made reunification possible without violence, without bloodshed. In earlier Soviet times, the tanks would have rolled – as in Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, GDR. He had a new way of addressing these monumental political and historical problems." the director said.

"I like Mr. Gorbachev. We can work with him," said British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in December 1984, one of the first in the West to recognize Gorbachev's novel style of politics and recommend a dialog to our wary U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

Werner Herzog noted that: "I think the people of Russia and also in the West are starting to realize the importance of this man, the greatness of what he has achieved. For example he undertook, along with Ronald Reagan, the largest disarmament agreement ever in the history of man."

The film by Werner Herzog and André Singer screened as the opening film at the documentary and animated film festival DOK Leipzig in autumn 2018 and is now hitting US cinemas.