Abstract
This article examines three European documentary films that contribute to discourses on democracy. By revisiting political processes of the past, O Palácio de Cidadãos (The Palace of Citizens, Pires, 2024), Petra Kelly – Act Now! (Metz, 2024) and The Day Iceland Stood Still (Hogan, 2024) contextualize current concerns and comment on the state of democracy. The films try to make a case for civic engagement by providing historic examples of successful democratic practices beyond party politics. In response to populist histories of national pasts, these films offer affective counternarratives in which defining moments in the nation’s history and symbols of collective identities are tied to the functioning of democratic institutions and successful civic engagement. In paying attention to the films’ formal qualities, this article examines the films’ representation of democratic processes of the past, their affective narrative strategies and the connections that are established between the past and the current political landscape and contemporary audiences.
When in March 2025 the annually published Democracy Report confirmed a deepening global democracy decline (Nord et al., 2025), it echoed fears of democratic backsliding in Europe that are also reflected in the current European documentary film landscape. Over the last few years, many European documentaries and film practitioners have drawn attention not only to the crisis of democracy in individual European states and European institutions, but also to the dangers a weakened democracy poses to an independent film culture which – in some countries – has already been affected by funding cuts, legal challenges, censorship and the transformation of the cultural sphere (see e.g. Sarkisova, 2024). In 2024 alone several international documentary festivals in Europe ran programme sections dedicated exclusively to the topic of democracy, e.g. Moldox 2024 or the Dokfest München with its section Democrazy.
The workings of democracy have always played an important part in documentary film practice, not only as a precondition for unhindered artistic expression, but also as an integral part of civic engagement and as investigative subject in social issue documentaries, even if the political system itself has not been the film’s main subject. However, in response to political shifts many recent European documentaries have turned their focus on democracy itself, often by charting the rise of populist politicians and movements that exploit discontent with growing economic disparities, insecurities and social change brought on by globalizing economies. In Eine deutsche Partei, (A German Party, Brückner, 2022) for example, Simon Brückner portrays the German rightwing populist party AfD. He uses a Direct Cinema approach: remaining completely invisible and without any commentary, he records conversations and election campaign meetings and so allows the party members to reveal their disagreements, their anti-constitutional positions and their cynical distortion of reality and manipulation of voters in their own words. In other recent productions, e.g. Democracy Noir (Field, 2024), or Sterbende Demokratien (Dying Democracies – Europe in Decline, Schneider, 2024), the filmmakers expose how populists employ divisive and affectively charged narratives to present seemingly simple solutions to complex social problems. The films depict politicians and their movements who present themselves as the true saviours of democracy while they gradually undermine and destabilize democratic institutions from within. These documentaries often privilege the perspectives of individuals who resist the dismantling of institutions and the persecution of regime critics, (e.g. in Democracy Noir, Of Caravan and the Dogs, Kurov, 2024, or Wer, wenn nicht wir? Der Kampf für Demokratie in Belarus – Who, If Not Us? The Fight for Democracy in Belarus, Tutein, 2023) and so emphasize the courage and resilience of opponents of authoritarian rule. Tirelessly, the films’ protagonists try to use all the democratic avenues available to them, yet often without success. By drawing on up-to-date examples and recent election results from all over Europe where populists influence or are in government, the films are deeply unsettling, even disillusioning, they paint a dire picture of the current state of European democracies and sound an urgent warning of nationalism, authoritarianism and democratic backsliding in Europe.
This article looks at three documentaries, all produced in 2024, that contribute to the discourse on European democracies, but rather than focusing mainly on the immediate present as do the films mentioned above, they contextualize current concerns around the state of democracy by revisiting political processes of the past. O Palácio de Cidadãos (The Palace of Citizens, Pires, 2024), Petra Kelly – Act Now! (Metz, 2024) and The Day Iceland Stood Still (Hogan, 2024) are films that model and try to make a case for engaged citizenship by looking back and providing historic examples of civic engagement and of democracy at work. They highlight the dynamics of democracy beyond party politics while, at the same time, they question and reveal weaknesses of current democratic practices. In response to right-wing populist, often nostalgic histories of seemingly glorious national pasts, these films offer affective counternarratives in which defining moments in the nation’s history and constituent symbols of collective and national identities are tied to the functioning of democratic institutions and successful civic engagement. The emotional pull of these films is generated through different affect-oriented narrative strategies, but it also resides in the films’ optimism in insisting that broad, inclusive and transnational civic movements can bring about positive change peacefully. In paying attention to the films’ formal qualities, this article examines the films’ representation of democratic processes of the past, the narrative strategies that are employed to address the spectator on an emotional level and the connections that are established between the past and the current political landscape and contemporary audiences.
All three films return to the 1970s and 1980s for their comparative look at democratic movements. Doris Metz’ documentary about the politician Petra Kelly is a co-production of Bildersturm and the European culture channel ARTE. Bildersturm is a German documentary film company that produces films for cinematic release and in collaboration with public broadcasters, it uses the established infrastructure of public film and television funding and, in their most successful productions, often focuses on the (controversial) legacies of West Germany’s recent political history. The title, Petra Kelly – Act Now!, already points to the relevance of the film’s subject to contemporary concerns. Through a formally conventional compilation of interviews, personal documents, photos and historical footage, the film portrays Petra Kelly, feminist activist and politician, who was one of the founding members and a prominent spokesperson of the West German Green Party until 1992, when she was murdered by her partner. The director aims at highlighting Kelly’s contemporary relevance to a younger generation of environmental and feminist activists by refocusing on her political legacy that had been overshadowed by the manner of her death (Arnold, 2024). In the film, Kelly emerges as a radical, outspoken and often inconvenient politician who remained sceptical of traditional party politics in parliament and who was a proponent of grassroots movements and the use of non-violent civil disobedience to force political decisions.
The Day Iceland Stood Still, an American-Icelandic co-production, recounts the events leading up to and following the 1-day strike of Icelandic women on October 24, 1975, in protest against discrimination and a lack of recognition of the importance of female work in society. The director, Pamela Hogan, mainly relies on interviews and the narration of life stories of participants in the feminist movement in the 1970s. The protagonists’ recollections and biographical accounts are often illustrated with the help of animated sequences, newsreel footage and family photographs. By juxtaposing personal memories with historical documents and footage from institutional archives, the film establishes direct causal connections between this example of extraordinary female activism and contemporary Iceland’s successes in achieving one of the highest levels of gender parity in the world.
At first glance, Rui Pires’ documentary O Palácio de Cidadãos does not seem to fit in with the other two productions, both in terms of its aesthetic and narrative strategies as well as in its focus on the immediate present rather than on events in the past. Over the course of one year, the director recorded everyday events and work routines inside the Portuguese parliament to reveal the functioning of democracy after the elections. Using a Direct Cinema approach or what Pires calls a ‘cinema do real’, the camera captures, among many other things, parliamentary discussions, committee work, citizens bringing forward petitions, mountains of paper being moved, preparations for a state visit being finalized and cleaners looking after the maintenance of the building. From the seemingly unscripted observations of parliamentary procedures, gradually two interconnected threads emerge to which the film returns repeatedly: first, the efforts by representative Helena Roseta to move forward the Housing for All bill and, second, the significance of the memory of the revolution of April 25, 1974, to the spirit of democracy in parliament.
Modelling democracy
Despite the differences in the three documentaries’ tone and aesthetic approaches, there are striking similarities between them in their representation of historical and contemporary practices of democracy. The films share an understanding of democracy as an ongoing polyphonic, participatory process rather than a permanent state, that, by its nature, is time-consuming, contradictory and dependent on dissent, compromise and constant deliberation. While all three films celebrate the results of democratic participation, the main emphasis is placed on the processes, tedious and conflict-laden at times, that eventually allow for these successes. With their portrayals of deliberation and civic engagement, the films offer a strong critique of forms of ‘thin’ democracy, a prevalent view of representative democracy in which choosing a party and voting in an election is promoted as the key and only activity of the citizens. In ‘thin democracy’ models, voters are perceived as mainly uninterested or unqualified in participating in complex political processes. Often, they also see themselves predominantly as observers or consumers who feel that they cannot influence political decisions and do not play an active role beyond the casting of their vote. Instead, the films promote a ‘strong’ or ‘thick’ democracy, a model that relies on forms of active citizenship and direct democracy 1 and, rather than the results of elections, it privileges public debate and deliberation, both of which have shown to be useful tools to counteract affective polarization (Setälä and O’Flynn, 2024). In focusing on the effort and time required by inclusive processes of deliberation and on the successes of democratic action, the films make several important points. First, they insist on the possibility to achieve positive change through debate and compromise and portray the democratic process itself as a necessary learning experience to produce educated and actively involved citizens. At the same time, they expose the limitations of current parliamentary practices that are unable to live up to an ideal of transparent and fair democratic representation and are too often shaped by party-political wranglings, frustrating bureaucracies and the ossification of institutional practices. Finally, by allowing insight into the histories of European democracies, the films use the cinema as a space for debate and thus contribute to the process of civic education themselves.
O Palácio de Cidadãos captures these contradictions clearly. Motivated by his own dissatisfaction with the functioning of Portuguese democracy, Rui Pires’ aim was to make visible the inner workings of democracy, examine and question the processes of political decision-making (O Palácio de Cidadãos Press kit, 2024: 7). The film’s narrative structure and observational stance follow the premise of an outsider looking in to discover what is normally hidden from view, a perspective established in the film’s opening scenes. The film begins with a shot of a crowd of people waiting in front of the doors of the parliament building, then the doors are opened, and the people walk in, presumably as part of an open-door event. At the entrance, they are greeted by Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues, the president of the assembly at the time of filming, who jokes with them and welcomes them with high-fives. Then the camera turns and observes the members of the public as they walk in and, metaphorically, take possession of their building. With red carnations in their hands or buttonholes to symbolize the significance of the revolution of 1974 for their identity as citizens of a democratic republic, they walk up the stairs, study the paintings, visit the gardens, discuss the seating order in the assembly hall and then finally sit down there themselves. Others enter the exhibition rooms where, with reverence, they inspect the original text of the Portuguese constitution and explain the document’s historical and political significance to their children. Later, as the day comes to an end, the camera captures the stillness of majestic stairwells and richly decorated corridors, before the lights are turned off. Only then the opening credits start to run, and after a prolonged black screen interlude, we hear the sound of a bell, perhaps announcing the beginning of a parliamentary session.
With this long and emotionally impactful sequence, Pires constructs a ‘we’ of the people as a visual metaphor: by placing the ‘demos’ at the site of the decision-making, the film’s point of departure is an ideal image of democracy that puts the citizens’ agency, their desires and collective will at its centre. The sequence that follows stands in contrast to the film’s beginning: as the camera takes us now into parliamentary sessions to observe how the elected representatives of the people debate a variety of issues, the tone shifts from a solemn celebration of the collective embrace of democratic principles to the everyday realities of democratic practice with its disagreements and contentious arguing about how to reconcile a multitude of competing interests.
In interviews and his director’s statement, Pires explains that his film is not trying to provide answers on how democracy should work, but rather to ask questions and provide insights into democratic practice which would allow viewers to formulate their own answers. Nevertheless, the film makes a clear case for participatory and engaged citizenship and, at the same time, is critical of mechanisms that silence the voices of the general public: poignantly, scenes in which we observe citizens bring forward petitions and express with clarity their intention and expectation to contribute to the shaping of their community are sandwiched between sequences recording regular committee and parliamentary sessions in which nothing is accomplished because they are dominated by cross-party quarrelling or unproductive debates about procedural matters. From time to time, the camera also focuses on the spectators’ gallery where members of the public observe the debates and are repeatedly admonished by the speaker for not remaining silent when they are applauding or commenting. Thus, the film does not only question parliament’s effectiveness or willingness to put the citizens’ will at the centre of its work, but it also suggests that the cause for the distance between citizens and institutions does not lie primarily in an uninterested and disengaged population, but rather in bureaucratic and procedural obstacles that discourage participation and do not allow timely responses to pressing issues.
The film’s focus on representative Helena Roseta and her efforts for the Housing for All bill exemplifies the challenges these slow and frustrating parliamentary processes pose to the representatives’ work, but it also draws attention to the history and legacies of engaged activism and extra-parliamentary civic movements in Portugal in which Roseta has actively participated, from being an activist in the Carnation Revolution to becoming the leader of the Independent Citizens’ Movement and an advocate for affordable housing. Twelve years ago, she initiated discussion of a law that would put the onus on the government to ensure that everyone has access to affordable housing. The bill was originally drafted to respond to the severe housing crisis, especially in Lisbon, and create the conditions necessary to implement the right to housing, enshrined in the constitution since 1976. Finally, after more than a decade of debate and the worsening of the housing situation, she can present the draft bill for deliberation. We observe her passionate advocacy over the course of seemingly endless committee meetings and debates. She continues to make her case with determination and patience in the pursuit of an agreement and in face of opposition attempts to delay it or obfuscate the facts. Finally, the bill is tabled to be voted on, together with a large number of other matters. The spectator gallery is filled with interested members of the public in anticipation of a long fought-over success. Once the reading of the bills and voting begin, one proposal after the other is defeated as representatives cast their vote according to party lines and regardless of the merit of the proposed change, thus rendering months of deliberation seemingly futile. As the session drags on, more and spectators leave in frustration. By the time the housing bill is approved at the end of the session, the spectator gallery is deserted, and while the film celebrates this success of democratic practice, it goes almost unnoticed by the people on whose behalf it was achieved.
Although in different ways, both The Day Iceland Stood Still and Petra Kelly – Act Now! are also critical of the representative political party democracy and locate the potential for collective civic agency outside of the party system as well as beyond national borders. The Day Iceland Stood Still charts the evolution of an extra-parliamentary women’s movement that was a response to the exclusion of female voices from the established political discourse in Iceland. The film’s representation of civic engagement puts similar emphasis on dissent, deliberation and compromise as essential components in the process of engendering change, but while O Palácio de Cidadãos observed forms of democracy within parliament, Hogan’s documentary suggests a broader understanding of what a strong democracy means by revisiting the events of 1975. As the Icelandic representative democracy at that time did not support or work towards the goal of gender equality and a more inclusive society, an alternative strategy to influence decision-making processes from outside parliament was required. When a national conference was organized to mark the UN’s International Year of Women in 1975, it provided an opportunity for the representatives of a range of women’s organizations to meet and connect with each other under one roof. While the participants of the conference had very different views of the role and responsibilities of women, they agreed on three major points: that the refusal to acknowledge the female contributions to society’s functioning was untenable and needed to be addressed, that women had to be united, willing to compromise to reach and include everyone, and that the proposed changes would have to benefit a large majority.
Hoping to ‘inspire viewers for generations to come to reimagine the possible’ (Hogan, 2024), the film’s main focus is on the efforts to mobilize women in all realms of society and convince them that it is possible to have an influence by demanding and using the civil rights a democratic system is granting its citizens. The Day Iceland Stood Still is perhaps the closest of the three films discussed here to what Kate Nash and John Corner (2016: 228) call ‘strategic impact documentary’, films that aim ‘to produce social change by integrating documentary production and strategic communication’. ‘Strategic Impact Documentaries’ rely on strategic partnerships for the funding and exhibiting of the films independently of or in addition to using established documentary infrastructure, they target specific audiences, often groups that are already engaged in the relevant social movements, and they attempt to promote audience engagement through emotion. In addition to different Icelandic funding sources, The Day Iceland Stood Still, produced by Krumma Films, was financially supported by Women Make Movies, an international non-profit feminist media arts organization that supports independent films made by women. The narrative, production and promotion strategies for the film combined attendance at documentary festivals with an extensive screening and event campaign at other venues around the world, many of which centres of feminist or community activism, and affect-oriented storytelling.
Through the recollections of women who participated in the movement, the documentary does not only rediscover a chapter of the history of European feminism, but it also provides context for more recent examples of direct democracy and impactful civic activism in Iceland, such as the referendums in protest against the Icesave settlement after the 2008 financial crisis (see e.g. Hallgrímsdóttir and Brunet-Jailly, 2015) or the attempts to draft a new crowd sourced constitution by a citizens’ assembly (see e.g. Thorarensen, 2016). Furthermore, the film delivers a civic lesson for contemporary viewers: as we observe the women grapple with social conventions and expectations, face intimidation, debate and compromise, realize the power of solidarity, and learn how to use the media to express themselves and increase their reach, the film offers a model for activism that – through organized and collective forms of protest – is aimed at the peaceful and legitimate expression of dissent and at political and social change. At a time when the concept of civil disobedience and other examples of activism cause controversies around the world, (e.g. instances that involve the damage of artefacts in museums or the disruption of traffic by climate activists), the film insists on the legitimacy and potency of collective activism with an example that remained within the framework of the constitution. Different to O Palácio de Cidadãos, which confronts the spectators with contradictory ideas and asks them to weigh their validity themselves, Hogan’s film guides the viewer by taking a clear stance, and it is more concerned with providing a positive example of civil engagement rather than with deliberating its legitimacy.
Doris Metz, the director of Petra Kelly – Act Now! shares with Hogan the desire to initiate or amplify intergenerational conversations about different forms of political engagement and to instil hope for the possibility of social change. 2 In several scenes, this cross-generational connection is emphasized, for example as young climate activists including Luisa Neubauer comment on Kelly’s surprising and inspiring relevance to current movements such as Fridays for Future, or when some of the interviewees’ recollections of misogyny in parliament or the media in the past resonate with current discourses on gender discrimination, the #MeToo-movement and the backlash following it.
In a mainly chronological biography based on interviews and archival materials, the documentary charts Petra Kelly’s work as an activist, Green Party politician and member of the West German parliament. The film’s focus on the evolution of Kelly’s political philosophy allows closer scrutiny of the advantages and challenges of both parliamentary party-political work on the one hand and of forms of grassroots activism and civil disobedience on the other. As we follow Kelly’s work as a peace activist, pacifist and eco-feminist who turned into a politician and worked within the structures of a representational party-political system, a complex and contradictory picture is drawn not only of West German political and democratic mechanisms in the 1970s and 1980s, but also of Kelly herself. For example, while she was known for her uncompromising stance as a pacifist and feminist, she also lived with a gun-owning former general who was married to someone else. Some admired her for her relentless dedication to her work and for her ability to synthesize seemingly unrelated facts into one big picture, others were critical of her impatience and unwillingness to work towards compromise and realistic solutions. Nevertheless, although these contradictions are mentioned, Metz’ film is clearly on Kelly’s side. She emerges as a principled, visionary role model who never wavered in her conviction of the necessity and usefulness of broad extra-parliamentary movements and forms of street activism. Viewing the Greens as an anti-party party, she saw their representation in parliament not as the goal itself, but rather only as one step to increasing their influence. As the Green Party became more comfortable within its parliamentary role, Kelly was often critical of what she perceived as an abandonment of their original base and commitment to street activism. Her own participation in political activism and her insistence on speaking out on causes beyond the West German parliament’s focus increasingly alienated her from the political establishment and made her an outsider among her own party.
But the film is not primarily a critical examination of the contemporary Green party, but rather a call to action: by providing an example of an activist and figure head of the progressive movement in West Germany who saw civil disobedience and street activism as legitimate and effective components to democracy, the film makes the case for a continued mobilization of broad civic engagement that, the film insists, can engender change. Both The Day Iceland Stood Still and Petra Kelly- Act Now! link the historical examples of grassroots activism to current protest movements by emphasizing their understanding of democracy as a process and as an ongoing project that needs to be continually reactivated and reflected upon as society, collective identities, values and democratic subjects evolve.
In Hogan’s film, the importance of this point is highlighted already in its opening sequence. Tapping into popular culture’s imagination of what Iceland may look like, the film begins with a sequence of eerily beautiful, wintry landscapes that are accompanied by a faint pixie-like female singing voice. The wind blows snow across barren land and icy waterfalls while an off-screen voice introduces to the audience an Icelandic saying that footprints in the snow are quickly filled again. The camera then cuts to the speaker, former Icelandic president Vigdis Finnbogadóttir, who became Iceland’s president in 1980, the first elected female president worldwide. Referring to the legacy of the women’s movement in the 1970s that paved the way for her ascendance to president, Vigdis explains that it is important to work to keep memories alive, to ‘take care that the snow does not fill the footsteps’ again.
The necessity of self-reflection and ongoing negotiation of what democracy means to its actors is also emphasized in a key sequence in O Palácio de Cidadãos that connects current parliamentary practices to the principles set out in 1975, when the constitution was written, as well as to current street protests. On the 45th anniversary of the revolution of 1974, parliament holds a celebratory event to commemorate the overthrow of the Salazar dictatorship. In a speech, Jorge Falcato Simões, a member of parliament and deputy of the assembly, describes the contrast between the country of his childhood, marred by injustice, fear, inequalities and reprisals against opponents of the system, and Portuguese democracy after 1974. Recalling the events of April 25th, he credits for the democratic transformation of Portugal a broad alliance within the population that included workers, students, politicians and activists fighting for the liberation of the colonies. In simple, but powerful language, Falcato Simões evokes the spirit of the revolution, the passion of progressive movements and the aspirations for a just society that found their way into the constitution. Poignantly, he asks his audience first, to acknowledge the connections between current discontent in the streets and the lack of progress made in parliament, e.g. the pandering to real estate lobby groups and the obstruction of the Housing for All bill, and second, to examine their work against the ideals of 1974 and the representatives’ responsibility to carry out the will of the people, some of whom are watching from the gallery.
Emotion in political discourse
This sequence does not only serve as an anchor for the film’s various narrative strands, but it also unfolds considerable affective power by drawing on emotionally charged signifiers of collective and national memory and identity, such as the carnations and the speaker himself whose biography is indelibly linked to the recent history of democracy in Portugal. At the beginning of the sequence, we observe the preparations for the commemorative session: carefully flower arrangements with carnations are distributed in the plenary hall. Then the mainly static camera captures the empty lectern, behind it the dignitaries have all taken their seats, carnations in their buttonholes, and the galleries are filling up. Slowly, Jorge Falcato Simões moves into the frame. He is using a wheelchair, so a special lift is necessary to allow him to take his position behind the microphone, and then he begins to speak. The fact that he is not introduced indicates that both his colleagues in the plenary hall but also the film’s wider Portuguese audience are familiar with him and his story. As a representative of the student movement and later a founding member of a left-wing party, Falcato Simões had actively participated in the Carnation Revolution. In 1978, he was shot by the police during a protest, as a result of which he became a paraplegic. Since then, he had been active both in Portuguese and European politics as an advocate for the rights of disabled persons. As he acknowledges in his speech, his own personal biography was an example for the obstacles that have to be overcome, but also for the possibility of progress and the power of passion and of sustained and purposeful action.
When the documentary premiered in October 2024 at Doclisboa, it was not the only film evoking the events of April 25th, 1974. Similarly to the opening film, Sempre (Fina, 2024), an essay film that revisits the Carnation Revolution through archival images, O Palácio de Cidadãos provided an opportunity for taking stock and examining the state of democracy in Portugal a few months after the 50th anniversary of the events. Pires’ observational film eschews any simple answers about the best approach to everyday democratic practice. It requires active spectators who must assess the efficiency and dynamics of representational party-political work themselves. However, the film leaves no doubt about the value and necessity of a strong democracy: by linking foundational elements of Portuguese national identity with the aspirations and the power of a functioning democracy, the film constructs an affective narrative of a ‘we’ that addresses the audience collectively. At the Doclisboa premiere, the large audience responded to the film with enthusiasm and a lively debate which suggests that Pires succeeded in tapping into and mobilizing the emotional reservoir of symbols representing the promise and potential of Portuguese democracy.
Pires’ attempt at accessing emotionally significant collective memories to construct an affective narrative is an approach that is shared by Doris Metz and Pamela Hogan. In this way, all three films contribute to the discourse on the role of populism, polarization and affect in political culture. They can also be read as responses to the call for counternarratives to combat the exclusionary and anti-democratic tendencies of right-wing populism. Frequently, populism is associated with the exploitation of emotions such as fear and anger, a hostility towards science, research and facts, and an alienation of the population from democracy. In her discussion of populism and affect in politics, Brigitte Bargetz (2024) argues that an understanding of populism as ‘merely emotional [. . . ] equates politics with rationality and objectivity and thereby discredits emotions as well as those characterized as emotional’ (73). It dismisses feelings of disappointment, rage, the longing for agency and the desire to be part of a group as powerful drivers of mass movements. Therefore, such a narrow view of populism is ill-equipped to further our understanding of the reach of these movements. Instead, affect, emotions and passion need to be acknowledged as integral components of political discourse in general. The formation of collective identities and the definition of a citizen’s relationship to the state and political system are never only rational but rely on affect. Bargetz points out that ‘emotions have not only been used as a means of exclusion and delegitimization but have also been a way to create self-assurance, legitimization, as well as moral and political superiority’ (75), and that political emotions can also function as drivers of engaged citizenship. As attempts to counter the surge of right-wing populism with exclusively rational and fact-based arguments often fall flat, increasingly, political scientists and commentators have called for the harnessing of emotion and passion in the fight for democracy. British political economist William Davies, for example, emphasizes the desire to belong as a powerful emotion, and he argues that in our present ‘democracies of feeling’ (Davies, 2019) ‘the Left should seek to touch people emotionally, allow them to be part of a movement, and create a common sense of purpose that includes non-experts and non-legislators’ (Davies, 2020: 418). Similarly, Belgian political scientist Chantal Mouffe ‘claims, ‘that this recognition of the crucial role of the affects and of the way they can be mobilized is decisive for envisaging democratic politics’’ (qt. in Bargetz, 2024: 78). More radically than others, she calls for a ‘left populism that can radicalize democracy’, ‘take back democracy’, and unite the Left (Cely and Mantilla, 2016).
Employing more mainstream narrative strategies than O Palácio de Cidadãos, The Day Iceland Stood Still also addresses this call for counternarratives that utilize the affective force and promise of democratic practices. As has already been mentioned above, the documentary’s visual language and soundtrack emphasize elements that are closely tied to notions of collective identity and are easily recognizable as uniquely Icelandic, e.g. waterfalls, wind-swept landscapes or the voice of Icelandic musician Björk at the end of the film. In their recollections of the events, many of the interviewees also use somewhat culture-specific linguistic metaphors, e.g. when they compare the events and their emotional experience to powerful rivers, volcanoes or lava, and it is mainly in these personal memories of women from different realms of Icelandic society that the film unfolds its emotional impact.
The first part of the film includes interviews with some of the women who were participants and organizers of the event in 1975, some of them now prominent and well-known individuals, e.g. a former president and a supreme court judge. They describe the time of their childhood and adolescence as marked by restrictive social conventions and gender discrimination; historical footage from Icelandic archives illustrates these personal narratives to extend their claims’ validity to Icelandic society in the 1970s more generally. The lack of prospects for girls to be accepted into influential positions in society and a shared sense among women that their work and contribution to society were not valued served as motivation for becoming active in the women’s movement. In emotional terms, the women speak of the fear of ridicule or reprisals, but more importantly, they emphasize the ways in which their participation in the women’s strike has shaped their future lives and their understanding of political activism. Not only did they grow as individuals who learned to value the feeling of solidarity, the sense of agency and purpose that came with being a member of a progressive mass movements. They also vividly describe the elation at being successful in using the tools of democracy for positive change. Some of the interviewees declare that this event that united 90% of the women in Iceland was the most important one of their lives, a grand statement, which nevertheless is underlined by the trajectory of the speakers’ professional biographies that are very different from those of their mothers.
The emotional impact of the narration of individual biographies is further heightened by the use of photographs from the speakers’ own personal collections. In addition, when there is no suitable image material, often humorous animated sequences are inserted to visualize the speaker’s recollections. For example, former Icelandic president, Guðni Jóhannesson, himself a child in 1975, remembers how his father was suddenly forced to make lunch for himself and his children when Guðni’s mother participated in the ‘Women’s Day Off’. While we hear Guðni’s voice talk about this day, an animated insert shows how the father and children try to cook hot dogs before the pot on the stove explodes and the burnt sausages fly into the air as if expelled from a volcano.
Employing literally ‘cartoonish’ exaggeration, these animated segments fulfil several functions. First, they imbue the narrative with humour and thus emphasize the absurdity of the discrimination that was part of the women’s lived experience. In her Director’s Statement on the film’s website, Pamela Hogan (2024) comments on humour as an important component of the Icelandic feminist movement as well as of the documentary itself. Through the animated sequences, the film tries to utilize the potential of humour as an affective discursive strategy that can positively influence and generate collective action, establish an affect-driven relationship between filmmaker, interviewees and spectators, and attract media attention. Stylistically similar to other Krumma Film productions that were also helmed by Hrafnhildur Gunnarsdóttir, the film captures the at times irreverent tone of the movement and continues the work of earlier Krumma films that also examined the history of feminist activism in Iceland.
Second, the animated sequences fill potential gaps in the spectator’s grasp of historical contexts; as Caty Borum (2025) contends, entertainment value is an important factor not only for audience engagement with documentaries, but also for the transmission and shaping of knowledge about social issues (Borum Chattoo and Feldman, 2017). Annabelle Honess Roe (2021) also argues that animation ‘facilitate[s] knowledge via imagination’ as the incongruity between the animated image and the material world invites cognitive engagement and opens up a space for the viewers’ responses shaped by their individual experience, cultural background etc. Thus, by translating subjective memories into images, the animated sequences provide the spectator an additional avenue to understanding the emotional experience of the event without making claims of representational authenticity of material reality.
In Petra Kelly – Act Now!, the use of affective culture-specific iconography that is tied to national identities is less obvious than in the other texts. Nor does the film incorporate formal elements that would expand the arsenal of conventional biographical documentaries, e.g. animation. Nevertheless, as the others, Metz’ film offers an invitation to the viewer to imagine the emotional experience of participating in a progressive mass movement. With its portrayal of Petra Kelly, an icon of the West German peace movement and Green politics who advocated for and modelled a similar kind of grassroots activism, the film charts the evolution of the political landscape of West Germany and the consolidation of a strong environmentalism and peace-oriented foreign policy that for many Germans has represented a cornerstone of contemporary collective identity. 3 Furthermore, Metz’s film offers a conceptualization of engaged citizenship that is not based solely on a rational analysis of a society in need of change, but also on strong emotional reactions. Just as the women in The Day Iceland Stood Still are driven by a shared sense of injustice, the film shows Kelly as motivated by her strong belief in pacifism and her passion for the many causes she worked for. Many of the interviewees comment on Kelly’s unique ability to galvanize crowds with her speeches and to address her audiences on an emotional level. Eva Quistorp (2022), one of Kelly’s former friends, who was interviewed for the film, also emphasized this quality in an open letter to Petra Kelly, where she writes: ‘You drew me and many others into the stream of hope and parliamentary politics’. Like Metz’ film, the letter criticizes the contemporary Greens for having abandoned the principles Kelly stood for, speculates where Kelly would fit in in contemporary Germany and asserts her relevance for the contemporary climate action community.
Countering right-wing populism
As the analysis has shown so far, all three films conceptualize progressive democratic practice as a broader participatory movement that complements and extends beyond party-representational structures. All three texts return to progressive movements in the 1970s to provide examples of successful civic collective actions and allow comparisons with (dissatisfactory) contemporary democratic practices. In different ways and to a varying degree, all three films also rely on the affective power of symbols of national and collective memory and, to a lesser extent, allow for nostalgic reflection on past events that shaped collective identities in Portugal, Iceland and West Germany, in particular in scenes when the film’s protagonists remember their political activism during formative years as young adults. Often, the affective evocation of nostalgia and pride in a better national past are communication strategies that are associated with right-wing populist discourses that construct a ‘we’ as an ethnically homogeneous version of the people in opposition to ‘others’, such as ‘elites’, immigrants, members of LGTBQ + groups or of different religions. However, although the filmmakers also employ affective narratives of ‘nation’, history and collective identity, they position themselves clearly in opposition to essentialist and exclusionary rhetoric of right-wing populism. The following paragraphs discuss how the films counter right-wing populist narratives and utilize emotions by ‘mobilizing them for democratic ends and by creating collective forms of identification around democratic objectives’ as proposed by Chantal Mouffe (qt. in Bargetz, 2024: 78). 4
Perhaps the most obvious aspect is the films’ representation of gender and their shared focus on female activism; in both Petra Kelly – Act Now! and The Day Iceland Stood Still, an exploration of women’s role in democratic processes is clearly the narrative centre of the film, whereas in O Palácio de Cidadãos, the thread following Helena Roseta’s work in parliament makes this point. By providing examples of consequential female participation in democratic processes that have been influenced by transnational progressive movements, the films challenge cultural representations of democracy that have traditionally been dominated by nation-specific narratives of male revolutionaries (Richter and Wolff, 2018: 7). Furthermore, whereas authoritarian right-wing populism often uses gender as a catalyst ‘not only to restore traditional gender regimes but also to advance an anti-democratic project’ (Sauer, 2024: 68), the films’ models of participatory democracy and female collective agency propose that gender equality and a strong democracy are interdependent. For example, The Day Iceland Stood Still repeatedly correlates the extraordinary event in 1975 that united the majority of women in exercising their democratic rights with the current status of the country as the ‘best country to be a woman’.
Although all three films return to national history to mobilize the spectators’ emotional responses to defining moments of collective identity, they do so not to glorify the past, to promote nativist notions of ‘the people’, or to preserve or reconstruct traditional social and political structures, but rather to celebrate the movements that were successful in overcoming inequal societies of the past and in initiating progressive change. The films’ direct or indirect criticism of current practices is not contrasted with a narrative of how democracy worked better in the past, but rather with a warning that successes of the past could be lost through democratic backsliding or a lack of continuous collective action and vigilance. Petra Kelly – Act Now!, for example, juxtaposes interviews with both prominent female politicians of Kelly’s generation and younger female activists with historical footage that shows Kelly being subjected to patronizing and misogynist comments by her male colleagues in parliament and in the media, thus drawing attention to the continuing hostility and hypocrisy that is being demonstrated towards female politicians today. In The Day Iceland Stood Still, the appeal to defend important achievements of the past is not only made at the opening of the film as described above, but with the closing sequence of the film that shows images of large gatherings of women (and men) of all generations on the anniversaries of the ‘Women’s Day Off’ in 1985, 2005, 2010, 2018 and 2023.
In contrast to exclusionary and nationalist notions of ‘the people’ in right-wing populist discourses, the films emphasize inclusivity not only across genders and generations, but also across ideologies and different realms of political engagement. In O Palácio de Cidadãos, the value of deliberative democracy for the mediation and compromise between ideological positions is of course one of the film’s central questions and, therefore, observing the work of elected representatives takes up most of the screen time. Nevertheless, the film works against the construction of a ‘“we” against “them”’ dichotomy by paying equal attention to the presence of non-elected citizens in parliament, in their roles as petitioners, visitors, cleaners, maintenance workers, observers etc. In Hogan’s film, the protagonists also emphasize that the women’s success was only possible because the different groups representing Iceland’s women were willing to compromise, e.g. by calling the action ‘Women’s Day Off’ rather than ‘Women’s Strike’ as some conservative women’s groups were unwilling to participate in a strike.
Finally, the documentaries conceive of a form of democratic citizenship that reflects and is a response to the repercussions of globalizations. Seyla Benhabib (2002) describes this form of citizenship as one that takes advantage of porous cultural and national borders, is influenced by cross-cultural dialogue and can be articulated in transnational contexts. On a paratextual level, this is most obvious in The Day Iceland Stood Still; the film is an international co-production, its very existence was propelled forward by interest in transnational commonalities of women’s movements and by a desire to make the events of 1975 more well-known outside of Iceland. On the representational level, all three films reference transnational political developments or protest movements that informed the models of democratic engagement at the centre of the films, but the transnational aspect of civil engagement and the insistence on inclusivity are perhaps expressed strongest in Petra Kelly – Act Now!. Kelly, who had moved to the USA with her family as a teenager, who was bilingual and fostered connections with activists around the world emerges in the film as the embodied image of a global citizen for whom the concept of nation did not play an important role in her political philosophy. At a time when the impact of globalized capitalism was not a constant factor of parliamentary debate yet, Kelly saw the connections between the diverse causes she fought for. Always with a sense of urgency and impatience, she demanded the same attention from her colleagues for environmental problems within Germany as for injustices outside of West Germany’s borders, e.g. to support East Germanys civil rights movement, indigenous groups in North America or victims of political oppression in Asia. While the film acknowledges that Kelly’s refusal to focus on smaller issues and to compromise caused friction, also within her own party, its admiration of her ability to see the big transnational picture and to follow her goals with persistence contributes to the film’s portrayal of Kelly as a politician and activist ahead of her time who must not be forgotten. In a discussion held after the documentary’s screening at the Munich Dok.fest, Doris Metz explained that the most important aspects she hopes her film will convey are Kelly’s continuing relevance to the younger generation, the fact that she was able ‘to think everything together’, that she was a true global citizen and that she was not afraid to express inconvenient truths (Filmtalk, 2024).
Conclusion
Asserting the potential of political or committed documentary film to contribute to processes of social transformation, the films do not only provide models of democratic practices on a representational level, but they participate in them themselves, first, by opening up the space of the cinema as a forum for critique, deliberation and debate, and second, by activating hope in the potential of change through democratic means. First, in interrogating democratic processes and institutions on screen, the films affirm documentary’s role in critically reflecting discourses on democracy and citizenship and their mediation: Pires’ film, for example, requires the spectator to weigh the different models of democratic practice presented in the film, The Day Iceland Stood Still and Petra Kelly – Act Now! highlight alternative forms of civic engagement. In revisiting milestones of democratic and civic engagement in their respective national histories, the documentaries ask the spectators to critically compare models of the past with current practices and assess their efficacy and relevance to contemporary concerns. At the same time, they reflect on their own medium’ participation in drawing attention to the evolution of the documentation of democratic processes through their use of archival material.
Second, as the world is experiencing a ‘truly global wave of autocratization’ and democracy is at its lowest level in half a century (Nord et al., 2024: 9), the three European documentaries discussed here re-examine democratic movements of the past to find inspiration for our current political practice. While the critical examination of current practices is an important aspect of the productions, at least as important is the films’ expression of optimism in democracy’s potential for positive change. At a time when large groups of the population disengage from traditional political parties, the films conceptualize successful democratic action as broad inclusive and participatory movements that go beyond party-representational models. They direct the spectators’ attention to progressive changes that were made possible through collective action in the past and try to encourage a new generation to defend these achievements and participate in civic action in the present. 5 Acknowledging the important role of emotions in political discourses, the documentaries attempt to mobilize shared affective responses to democratic achievements within their specific cultural contexts, and in this way, they confer value and cultural meanings to collective civic activism. Refusing to leave the construction of collective identities to right-wing populist rhetoric, the films thus respond to calls for affective counternarratives that offer the promise of belonging, justice, inclusivity and agency in defence of democracy.
Footnotes
Ethical considerations
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Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by a York University internal research grant.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.