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AfD documentation "People's Representatives": "I want to see it again until I freak out"

2022-05-25T16:18:18.928Z


The documentary filmmaker Andreas Wilcke accompanied four AfD members of the Bundestag in their everyday lives. The result is a quiet film that brings to light the oblivious Biedermeier era of right-wing populists.


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AfD member of the Bundestag Enrico Komning: What counts is not the content, but the presentation

Photo: wilckefilms

Two men in the capital, enveloped in the cloak of history, of German history: Wartburg, Paulskirche, the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles.

"The world was still in order then," says one, as he looks Prussian King Wilhelm in the eye at the moment when he is proclaimed German Emperor Wilhelm I.

And further: "Bismarck looks a bit like a descendant of Genghis Khan." The other says: "He is said to have had a Russian girlfriend too."

The two gentlemen who are talking a little shop about the year 1871 are members of the Bundestag for the AfD, in the middle of the legislative period after their election in 2017. At that time, the AfD entered the Bundestag for the first time with a double-digit result.

The two inspect the parliamentary group hall, which has just been decorated with glorious moments from German history.

One is called Armin-Paulus Hampel, is a journalist, has reported for MDR from Bonn and India, is proud that his father was a fraternity member at Arminia in Breslau and knows that a good story "needs a head and an ass".

The other is called Götz Frömming, is a teacher of German and history, likes to talk about culture, German identity and why people of color shouldn't "screw up his Kleist at the taxpayer's expense".

Frömming and Hampel are two of the four protagonists who carry the AfD documentary »Volksberater« by the Berlin filmmaker Andreas Wilcke.

The one-and-a-half-hour film will be released in cinemas at the end of May.

It is a quiet film about a party that is often loud and shrill.

The front men and women play a marginal role at best.

At the center of Wilcke's film are anachronistic figures, people who often seem to have fallen out of time and who have found a place in the AfD where they can refuse a complicated and often contradictory reality with impunity.

Like Norbert Kleinwaechter.

The slim man, who always seems a bit restless, was elected to the Bundestag from Brandenburg.

He's actually from the west and used to be with the left-wing WASG.

He is now responsible for European politics in the AfD parliamentary group and speaks fluent French with a group of schoolchildren from the western neighboring country.

He can pepper his speeches with Rousseau quotes or incorporate Freudian terms or really freak out when it comes to the CDU and Angela Merkel.

"I want to see that again until I freak out," Kleinwächter says.

An employee filmed his staged emotional outburst, and it's about to go viral.

Wilcke's film also shows this: content is at best secondary, what counts is the presentation with the highest possible potential for excitement.

There are cameras everywhere, and people are filming with smartphones.

The MPs are constantly posing and uploading to Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Enrico Komning, the fourth in the group, a lawyer from Neubrandenburg, stares curiously at his smartphone.

How many clicked today, how many liked his regular video message.

This time it's a Ballaballa sentence about an alleged fascist Antifa.

2400 clicks in two hours.

Coming is satisfied.

Group colleague Frömming meanwhile has to maintain his Twitter account.

He is standing in front of the Hambach Castle in the Palatinate: a scene of the revolutionary pre-March in the 19th century, which has long since been hijacked by right-wing historical revisionists as a national sanctuary.

A student should quickly take a photo of the member of parliament.

No, no police cars, that's annoying.

Frömming quickly zooms in on his likeness to fill the screen, with the castle in the background.

One click later, the followers are fed again.

Wilcke delivers little that is spectacular, sometimes it also seems tough and could have used one or the other cut.

His protagonists move in rooms and places where politicians happen to be: often in offices and conference rooms, at state party conferences in the Bundestag and in the constituency, sometimes on the street with the voters.

Very rarely where the consequences of political decisions become visible, and even then the reality behind the staging disappears.

Armin-Paulus Hampel visits a refugee camp in Greece with his staff, all men.

One employee feels unwell and seems as if he would prefer not to leave the protective SUV at all.

Hampel: very different.

As an old reporter, he storms right in and towards the people.

Always with the same question in English: Where are you from?

Where are you going?

One says »Germany«.

The others say they want to stay in Greece or don't name a destination in Europe at all.

Then Hampel gets into position: one last puff from the cigarette, the butt easily flicked away, in the background a sea of ​​tents.

An employee sets up the camera, Hampel begins his announcer in the dramatic Tagesschau sonority: "This is a camp on the long route to Europe, on the long route to Germany." and reality is done for the AfD again.

"And departure, men."

»People's Representatives« by Andreas Wilcke.

94 minutes, nationwide in 13 cinemas from May 27th.

Source: spiegel

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