‘Waldheims Walzer - Ruth Beckermann’

In the presence of Ruth Beckermann (director).

1985. Kurt Waldheim, former Secretary General of the United Nations, is a candidate for the post of Federal President in Austria. The revelations about his Nazi past reverberated throughout the world. Waldheims Walzer follows the passionate discussions of the time. Ruth Beckermann documents and commentates different points of view and different voices that took part in the discussions. The director uses sequences from the time, that she herself had filmed, and which had disappeared in the meantime, as well as TV archives. There are press conferences with the Worldwide Jewish Congress, discussions during the UN General Assembly, hearings at the American Congress and interventions by politicians from the ÖVP, and finally, Waldheim himself who claimed to be a victim of calumny and obstinately rejected the slightest revelation. At the start of the film, you can hear Beckermann speaking off camera: “Maybe it isn’t by chance that the old sequences that I filmed have resurfaced right now.”