Waldheim's waltz

Movie
Original title	Waldheim's waltz
Country of production	Austria
original language	German , English , French
Publishing year	2018
length	93 minutes
Rod
Director	Ruth Beckermann
script	Ruth Beckermann
production	Ruth Beckermann
cut	Dieter Pichler

Waldheim's Waltz is an Austrian documentary from the year 2018 of Ruth Beckermann . The premiere took place in February 2018 as part of the 68th Berlin International Film Festival , where the film was invited to the Forum section and was awarded the Glashütte Original Documentary Award. In Austria, the film was shown on the Diagonale in March 2018 . The German theatrical release took place on October 4, 2018, the Austrian on the following day. The film was broadcast for the first time on ORF on May 17, 2020 at 11:05 p.m. as part of the focus on 75 years at the end of World War II .

The production was selected by the Association of the Film and Music Industry (FAMA) as the Austrian candidate for the best foreign language film at the 2019 Academy Awards.

content

In her documentary film about the Waldheim affair about the then federal presidential candidate and later federal president Kurt Waldheim , Ruth Beckermann combines her own recordings from the campaign for the federal presidential election in Austria in 1986 with international archive material. The film documents how gaps in Waldheim's biography during the Second World War were uncovered by the Jewish World Congress in New York City and how this subsequently led to a national alliance, anti-Semitic riots and his election in Austria . In addition, the film analyzes the collapse of the victim thesis , shows mechanisms of the mobilization of inflammatory feelings and deals with truth and lies in politics and society as well as alternative facts .

Protagonists (selection)

Production and Background

Ruth Beckermann (2018)

Beckermann had already presented the first images of her film in 2016 at the Diagonale in Graz, at that time she wanted to call the film Waldheim or The Art of Forgetting . At that time she said: "Waldheim is quite uninteresting as a character [...] He was neither a real Nazi nor a war criminal , more like a prototype of the cowardly Austrian official."

The film was supported by the Austrian Film Institute , the Vienna Film Fund and Filmstandort Austria (FISA), and the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation was involved . The film was produced by the Austrian Ruth Beckermann Film .

reception

Alexandra Seibel found in the daily newspaper Kurier that the found footage documentation was not only explosive political, "but also gripping, pointed and immensely entertaining." In the montage Beckermann would update her historical inventory for our present and its right-wing populism. The “emotional, almost melodramatic core” would be provided by his son Gerhard Waldheim by attempting to defend his father with his head bowed in material from a questioning during a US hearing that has not yet been broadcast.

Alan Posener judged in the world that the film was more topical than one can imagine. During the recordings of the public hearings of the US Congress in Washington, "one would delusion , visible which therefore is no less pathetic because it is firmly believed and continues to work today." He also wrote: " From the off reflects Beckermann the ratio of Acting and documenting. Exactly this technique, which Bertolt Brecht would have called alienation , is what makes the film so strong in times of fake news . "

Anne-Catherine Simon quoted Peter Turrini in the daily newspaper Die Presse , who says in the film: “What is the point of asking whether we would have been cowardly or courageous in 1938 when the question can only be whether we are cowardly today or are brave? ”.