The Waldheim Waltz

"Waldheim no, Waldheim no!" chants a crowd on the streets of Vienna in 1986. The filmmaker Ruth Beckermann is one of the activists. Armed with camera and microphone she wants to prevent the election of Kurt Waldheim as Austrian Federal President. More than 30 years later, with her own recordings and a wealth of archive material, she analyses the "Waldheim Affair" as a turning point in Austrian post-war history. She reconstructs how the Jewish World Congress in New York and international media gradually uncovered the gaps in the war biography of the former Austrian Foreign Minister and UN Secretary-General: Waldheim had always kept quiet about his activities as an officer in the Wehrmacht from 1942-44 and denied any involvement in Nazi crimes, even the knowledge of them at the time. But the more damning the accusations became, the more successful the mobilization of a dull sense of "we" with anti-Semitic undertones proved to be in Austria. Although actually everyone knew the truth, the country had until then been adept at pretending to itself and the world that Austria was the "first victim of the Nazis" - a life lie that had been reproduced for decades in Sunday speeches, books and films about Austria's homeland. Even though Waldheim was actually elected Federal President in the end and remained in office until 1992, his victory, from today's perspective, marked the beginning of his actual defeat. He remained internationally isolated during his entire term of office, and official Austria finally opened up to the long overdue confrontation with its own past. "Waldheims Waltz" is a film about lies, truth and "alternative facts". About individual and collective consciousness. A didactic play about stirring up emotions, the media creation of images of the enemy and the successful use of populist propaganda and anti-Semitic slogans during an election campaign. But Ruth Beckermann's film also shows how thoroughly a vigilant civil society can change a country. After her award-winning feature film debut "The Dreamed Ones" (2016), the director returns to documentary form with "Waldheim's Waltz", thus continuing her internationally acclaimed documentary cinema ("The Paper Bridge", 1987; "Beyond the War", 1996; "American Passages", 2011).