Henry Fonda for President
12/7/2025, 4 PM

In his essay film, curator and author Alexander Horwath weaves a narrative double helix that links the biography of actor Henry Fonda with the history and politics of the United States – from the 17th century to the present. Playful in its associations and rich in insights, his “masterpiece of applied cinephilia” (James Lewis Hoberman) creates an intimate portrait of America and its reflections in the cinematic imagination.

Director Alexander Horwath on his film and the fusion of fiction and politics in American history to the present day:

“The film begins with a personal memory: Paris, summer of 1980. The Moscow Olympics are underway. In Detroit, Ronald Reagan has just been nominated as the Republican presidential candidate. In New Hampshire, Henry Fonda is shooting his final film. Two actors sketch out two different ways of viewing the United States of America: as God’s Own Country or as a stage for social struggle.

A sharp leap backwards: Holland, 1651. A dual history of migration takes its course: the story of a man and his family – and the history of a nation in motion. The film’s journey continues to the shores of the Mohawk River and the years of the American Revolution, to the ‘Wild West’ and the waves of racist violence in the early 20th century, to New York during the Great Depression, to Hiroshima and the Pacific Front in World War II.

The post-war era and its new forms of depression, the Cold War and its apocalyptic scenarios – this is also the time when the society of the spectacle finally asserts itself. Our protagonist is now closer than ever to the role of a politician. The story ends around 1976: after Watergate and the Vietnam War, during a time of confusion and hope in which the U.S. is trying to find itself again.

Each station on this journey through the country and its times is connected to Henry Fonda – to his life and that of his ancestors, to his work as an actor and his public persona, and to the movie characters he portrayed. He becomes concentrated in them – along with the country from which all of these faces arise. Considered from the vantage point of today: another time, another country. But its phantoms, no matter if famous or nameless, are more potent than ever before.”

In Où en êtes-vous, Christian Petzold ? (Where do you stand today, Christian Petzold ?), the two filmmakers Christian Petzold and Christoph Hochhäusler discuss Henry Fonda's performance in Alfred Hitchcock's 1956 thriller The Wrong Man through a series of still images.