“A Direct Cinema Dilemma: Observing the AfD”
Marcy Goldberg (University of Zurich)
The party so casually invoked in the film’s laconic title, A German Party, is the far-right populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Founded in 2013 out of primarily Eurosceptic and anti-immigrant impulses, the AfD was generally considered too fringe to be taken seriously at first. But in the 2017 federal elections, the increasingly extremist AfD entered the Bundestag (the German federal parliament) as the third most successful party behind the center-right Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, with an alarming 12.6% percent of the vote. That same year, filmmaker Simon Brückner began research on this documentary, going on to shoot for a period of about two years starting in 2019 and concluding shortly after the next set of federal and local elections in 2021, in which the AfD did not achieve its hoped-for political gains.
The most remarkable thing about A German Party is that Brückner was able to make it at all, gaining unprecedented access to the inner workings of the party at strategy sessions, closed-door meetings, and private gatherings, as well as public conventions and demonstrations. According to the film’s promotional materials, the AfD had no input into the editing process. Brückner includes two scenes in which someone voices uncertainty about the recording, only to be overruled by other participants. For the most part, his protagonists come across as astonishingly, perhaps even recklessly, unconcerned about the things they say and do while Brückner’s camera is running.
A German Party offers a wide-ranging look into the culture of the AfD as well as its political strategies on local, regional, and national political levels. The film’s stubbornly understated Direct Cinema approach leaves it open to criticism that the lack of interaction or commentary, additional context, or fact-checks could allow the AfD to present itself sympathetically or to mislead the viewer. However, by not interacting or intervening, Brückner does set the stage for capturing the party’s own dynamic in ways that prove extremely revealing. As it turns out, the AfD is beset by internal strife and contradictions, leading to a lot of bickering, jockeying for position, and intrigue, in which participants manage to discredit themselves in ways that are at times both concerning and amusing.
There is a significant culture gap, for instance, between Western and Eastern branches of the party, largely due to their different histories during the Cold War period when Germany was divided into two political systems. There is ongoing tension between the main party and the far more extremist and openly neofascist youth wing (the Junge Alternative). And there is lingering resentment among working-class party members about what they see as patronizing or elitist attitudes from their more middle-class or academic counterparts. As with so many documentaries shot during this time period, the Covid pandemic inevitably makes its mark, causing additional schisms within the AfD around science denial, anti-vax and anti-mask posturing, and anti-government provocations.
Beyond all that, the film focuses on the pure drama of ongoing power struggles among the party’s prominent actors, as they fight about whether to stay true to the most extremist, xenophobic, and conspiracist positions, or cultivate a more moderate image in an attempt to attract more voters. By the end of the film, several figures have either resigned from or been driven out of the party, while others emerge to take their places. Many nuances of this internecine strife will, however, be lost to the international viewer unfamiliar with the specific personalities or the German political context – not least because the film does not explicitly introduce the various protagonists beyond the occasional passing reference to a name or a title.
At the same time, this lack of contextual detail serves to underscore the wider appeal and relevance of the film’s subject beyond this specific milieu. From an international – and certainly a US – perspective, the rhetoric and the tropes of far-right anti-democratic politics will be all too familiar. These include the demonization of foreigners and minority groups, the mocking of egalitarianism, the rejection of mainstream media and science, the appeal to anti-enlightenment values, the subversion of traditionally leftist-activist protest methods and slogans, and especially the outright trolling, often to inadvertently comic effect. In one telling scene, two smirking committee members suggest launching a motion to require a German flag and a copy of the Constitution in every classroom in the country – “as they do in America” – only to be reminded by a colleague that “we don’t support the Constitution, because they use it against us.” In another scene, as chilling as it is ridiculous, a number of low-level party members debate the advantages of deporting all Muslims out of Germany, which would ostensibly “solve the problems” faced by Muslim families raising their children in a different culture.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of A German Party is the very normality of the people it portrays. As one protagonist puts it: they are not “Hollywood Nazis” with the obligatory uniforms and tattoos. Aside from a few explicitly trollish figures, nearly everyone in the film comes across as disquietingly earnest and well-meaning, even if many of them are – to put it as politely as possible – very obviously limited in their critical thinking skills. Repeatedly, the film shows someone raising what seem to be fair questions about democratic structures, or Covid policy, or problems with European Union bureaucracy, only to veer off into conspiracy theories or neofascist talking points about Germany’s impending downfall and threats to racial purity. Which brings us to the dilemma at the heart of Brückner’s film: while his strictly observational methods gained him the access to expose these well-dressed and mild-mannered citizens as the dangerous extremists they are, it offers no solutions for how to counter their ideology or debunk the claims for which the film provides a platform.
It might have been interesting, toward the end of the documentary, for Brückner to reveal more details from behind the scenes: perhaps on how he negotiated permission to embed himself within this milieu, or how his presence might have affected the outcome of certain situations. As the son of well-known leftist activist professor Peter Brückner, who was the subject of his previous documentary (Aus dem Abseits, 2015), he was presumably not an unknown quantity to the AfD officials. Their attitude seems to have been that, as long as the film remained within the purely observational, it would serve to portray their views without discrediting them. It can only be hoped that they were wrong.
“Observing a German Party”
Jens Eder (Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf)
Documentary films can explore politics with great depth and vividly capture its psychosocial dynamics and affective forms. However, they also face major challenges in doing justice to complex political issues and contributing to the public sphere. Such challenges are exacerbated when documentarists examine the current surge of many countries’ far-right parties and the pressing questions about their success, goals, and internal organization. How can filmmakers gain access to their inner circles and insights about their modus operandi? How can they adequately present their functionaries, whom they will mostly consider ideological opponents, and reach an audience with such uncomfortable topics?
The documentary Eine deutsche Partei (A German Party, 2022) by Simon Brückner is part of a recent wave of German documentaries that endeavor to interest and inform their viewers about democratic institutions and processes. Taking on the above challenges, it follows several representatives of the Alternative for Germany party (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD) from 2019 to 2021. Since 2013, the AfD has developed from a nationalist-neoliberal into an extreme right party monitored by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Verfassungsschutz). Despite this, it is represented in several German state parliaments, the Bundestag, and the European Parliament. And its electorate is growing; current polls put it at over 20 per cent nationwide and over 30 per cent in some federal states.
Brückner approaches the AfD with a view that could be described as ethnological or sociological (he studied both subjects and has biographical connections to them; his earlier film Aus dem Abseits focuses on his father, a professor of social psychology and leading figure in left-wing movements). A German Party subjects the normally inaccessible world of internal party politics and its endemic laws and rituals to a cool field study. To understand the party as a social system, Brückner accompanies several of their protagonists at federal, state, and district level to meetings, lectures, demonstrations, election events, party conferences, and trips abroad. The spectrum ranges from the parliamentary group to the youth organization, from the seemingly moderate to the clearly extremist. The ideologies, strategies, hierarchies, and self-presentations of the politicians become visible in detail so that over the course of the film, a differentiated picture of the party emerges. It appears as a toxic male monoculture and as a fragmented assemblage that develops dynamically through power games and contingent events. The party seems ridden by constant clashes between different wings with widely differing views on migration, environmental, economic and health policies, and different individuals who desperately search for recognition. The film also makes visible the frightening extent to which even seemingly moderate party members are steeped in racist, sexist, inhumane ideas. Over the two and a half years of his long-term observation, Brückner’s documentary captures decisive phases of the party’s radicalization, in which its most extreme representatives prevail, and thereby also indicates that the current investigation of the party by the Verfassungsschutz is more than justified.
A German Party was produced by spicefilm, a limited liability company founded especially for this film (also to minimize legal issues). As is common in German film culture, it was financed through federal and state funding organizations and public television stations. To create his multi-layered picture, Brückner took an observational approach, without explicit verbal commentary or interviews. This was a precondition to gain access to the party members, who saw the film as an opportunity to present themselves and their politics. The observational approach aimed to allow viewers to form their own picture of the party, and at the same time also forced the filmmakers to set aside their own preconceptions and adopt an analytical attitude of interested distance. Across 143 days, Brückner joined the AfD members, usually equipped with two cameras, one on a tripod, one on his shoulder. Some self-reflective scenes in the film show the functionaries’ reactions to his presence: some stage themselves for the camera, others send him out of the door, but the prevailing attitude seems to be expressed in one politician’s statement: “in 2023 nobody cares anymore anyway.”
Despite its observational form, the film’s structure helps convey a clear attitude towards its subject. Refraining from emotional storytelling, spectacular aesthetics, or rhetorical calls to action, Brückner and his editors, Gesa Marten and Sebastian Winkels, deliberately divide the film into six sections to interrupt the narrative flow, break off suspenseful plot lines, and turn away from party protagonists before empathy can take hold. They carefully use a few telling comical moments but leave out many more drastic or satirical scenes. In short, they de-narrativize, de-dramatize, and de-empathize in order to enable viewers to reflectively distance themselves and analyze the party in its complex structure. The filmmakers argue that only in this way is it possible to shape an appropriate experience of this political field, neither aligning the viewers with party members nor falling into preconceived stereotypes but instead conveying more accurate knowledge.
A German Party exemplifies how closely cinematic form is linked to practices of production, distribution, and circulation, which in turn influence social impact. On the production and reception side, the observational mode of the film was a precondition for gaining access and enabling a differentiated analysis. On the distribution side, however, its form limited its reach, at least initially. Although Brückner’s film made waves at festivals and received many enthusiastic reviews, several influential reviewers also attacked it for allegedly criticizing the right-wing extremists too little and thus offering them a stage – a recurring accusation against observational documentaries about unsavory film subjects. Presumably, this contributed to the fact that many cinemas did not show the controversial film for fear of attacks from both the left and the right. Another reason may have been that another, very different observational documentary about the AfD – Volksvertreter (Representatives of the people, Andreas Wilcke 2022) – had been released shortly before.
All this meant that A German Party got only a very limited cinema release. However, the filmmakers organized numerous local special screenings, including for foundations, schools, universities, and unions, some of them with several hundred participants. Even internal screenings for secret services were scheduled. Moreover, the director started a podcast with political experts discussing issues related to the AfD, and the distributor produced educational material for schools. All of that later helped the documentary get a wide reach on public service television. Thereby, it reached an exceptionally wide spectrum of diverse audiences, ranging from AfD members to secret service employees investigating them.
A German Party skilfully positions itself in the ethical field of tension that is inevitably associated with the cinematic observation of extremist groups. On the one hand, there was a risk of offering extremists a stage. On the other hand, state intelligence services might extract information from the film, which seems to violate the general principle that documentaries should critique those in power. In this respect, however, the documentary may be compared to Herbert Marcuse’s “Feindanalysen” for the US Office of Strategic Services in the 1940s: analytical “opponent analyses” of anti-democratic forces are highly relevant for a democracy. Brückner’s film serves neither the rulers nor far-right anti-democrats, but responds above all to a societal need for political insight and dialogue. It is thus a particularly clear example of how observational documentaries can have a sustainable social impact and contribute to the political public sphere. The numerous discussions that A German Party has triggered among various audiences show its openness and its invitation to viewers to form their own opinions and discuss them among themselves. What approach could be more democratic?
*The article is based on personal conversations with Brückner and other team members, discussions after screenings of their film, press material, film reviews, and Brückner’s podcast series on the political context.
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