Henry Fonda for President

In the organizer's words:

A documentary essay about the USA - seen through the lens of a film actor. Henry Fonda and his roles merge into a dazzling and conflict-laden figure. A very reserved man who sees himself as an anonymous figure, a "blank space", becomes the driving force, the secret author of a great American narrative.
His voice, recorded in 1981 during his last interview, and the characters he played lead us through the film - and on a road trip across the USA: from a place called Fonda, NY, via the Midwest, where the actor grew up, to the Pacific. And they take us through the history of the country, from 1651 to the 1980s, when another film actor became US president.
Horwath, film historian and former director of the Viennale and the Austrian Film Museum, weaves together various strands in his three-hour work: Henry Fonda's roles (and how he filled them with his own understatement, gestures and intonations), his life story, the nation's political culture right up to its current manifestation in carnivalesque. He counteracts the American myth of "Go West, young man!" with the opposing perspective of the country's indigenous people.