Die PARTEI (2009)

Martin Sonneborn, who is both the party’s founder and its national chairman, traces the party’s development since its founding in 2004 and presents his vision of political success. Advertised as a “propaganda-film documentary in the tried-and-tested Guido Knopp style,” the film resembles a fictional documentary in style. It deliberately pokes fun at the participants in real-life interviews and parodies various documentary conventions in staged scenes, such as the contemporary-witness interviews with party officials. The film is set in the future, in 2013, when the party has already seized political power in Germany. It offers a non-chronological look back at the path taken by the party Die PARTEI from its founding in 2004 through 2009, the year the film was released. The documentary begins with Sonneborn and his colleagues visiting the Bundestag, where they meet various members of parliament. Sonneborn prudently measures the office of FDP member of parliament Siegfried Gelbhaar, in anticipation of the entry into the Bundestag that he expects, and already haggles over Gelbhaar’s furniture. The campaign for the 2005 federal election receives extensive attention, including the call to tear down Dresden’s Frauenkirche and the high-profile reconstruction of a few metres of the Wall. Actual media reports about the party are shown, as is its final campaign advertisement for the federal election. The film also includes footage from several national party conferences and the casting of the candidate for chancellor. The party’s first foreign-policy act is presented as its 2007 visit to Georgia, including a visit to Stalin’s birthplace. The main purpose of the trip, however, is a meeting with the Georgian Labour Party, represented among others by Shalva Natelashvili, and the signing of bilateral agreements establishing cooperation between the two parties.