Henry Fonda for President

A personal essay about the United States, viewed through the life and work of a movie actor. Henry Fonda and the roles he played merge into a dazzling and conflicted figure. A very private man who thought he had "no good answers to anything" becomes the unlikely motor of a parallel history. His voice, recorded during his last interview in 1981, and his onscreen avatars guide us through America’s past and present – on a road trip from the village of Fonda, NY, across the Midwest to the Pacific; from 1651 to the 1980s and the presidency of another movie actor. It takes many places and times and characters to imagine an invisible republic – the United States of Fonda.

"In 1980, two biographies cross paths in a Paris cinema: those of young cinema-goer Alexander Horwath and the actor Henry Fonda. Horwath recognised early on that the popular view of Fonda as a "typical American" and the "conscience of the USA" in his acting roles doesn’t paint the full picture. It is the more convoluted paths of Fonda’s biography and how he played roles and embodied attitudes extending beyond individual characters that truly interest Horwath. Thrillingly edited with Michael Palm, his essay film follows them across the history of film into an imaginary republic of places, times, characters: "The United States of Fonda". Fonda becomes the link between an old and a new America, the thoughtful face of the alleged transition from the law of the jungle to civilisation as well as a critic of an American self-image that only serves itself. Paradoxically, it’s the magic of cinema invoked in the film that contributes to this (self-)disenchantment of America via its own specific techniques and the help of one of its greatest magicians. And in doing so creates a wonderfully complex cinematic memorial to both the USA and storyteller and actor Fonda – the president that never was."
(Berlinale)