Horst Schlämmer - Isch kandidiere! (2009)

Horst Schlämmer, the bumbling and unlikeable deputy editor-in-chief of the Grevenbroicher Tagblatt, accidentally poisons his boss. So he interviews various politicians about an ongoing election campaign in his boss’s place. When he realizes that they’re all “just ordinary people,” he decides to go into politics himself and become chancellor straight away. Since no party will have him, he starts his own, the Horst Schlämmer Party (HSP)—which, as he puts it, is “liberal, conservative and left-wing.” Under the slogan “Yes Weekend,” borrowed from Barack Obama, he struggles to drum up support. Actress Alexandra Kamp, smitten with Schlämmer’s lust for power, wins over numerous prominent supporters. To make his party appealing to young people, Schlämmer persuades rapper Bushido to write a campaign song for the HSP. With the help of interviews and conversations with politicians such as Jürgen Rüttgers, Lale Akgün, Otto Fricke, Claudia Roth, Gesine Lötzsch and Cem Özdemir, he gathers ideas for his campaign. In a televised chancellor debate with Angela Merkel, he proposes a hare as Germany’s new coat of arms (“hare power for Germany”), and says that his hometown should become the federal capital. When television reports on election day that his party has won 37 percent of the vote, Schlämmer faints and dreams that he is being sworn in as chancellor. But the report was a mistake: the HSP won only 0.37 percent. Schlämmer’s dream of a political career has therefore come to nothing—and Alexandra Kamp is no longer charmed by his power.