Henry Fonda for President

The film begins with a personal memory: Paris, in the summer of 1980, at the same time as the Olympic Games are taking place in Moscow; in Detroit, Ronald Reagan is elected as the Republican Party's candidate for President of the United States; in New Hampshire, Henry Fonda is shooting his last film. Two actors outline two different ways of focussing on the United States of America: as God's Own Country or as the scene of social struggles.

This is followed by a huge leap backwards: to Holland, to the year 1651. A double migration story takes its course, the story of a man and his family - and the story of a nation on the move. The film's journey takes us to the banks of the Mohawk River and the years of the American Revolution, to the ‘Wild West’ and the racist riots of the early 20th century, to New York during the Great Depression, along Route 66 - from the ‘Dust Bowl’ to California, and to Hiroshima, on the Pacific front during the Second World War.

The post-war era and its new types of depression, the Cold War and its apocalyptic overtones - 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 politician.
The story comes to an end around 1976: after Watergate and the Vietnam War, when the USA is trying to reinvent itself.

Henry Fonda paves the way for this narrative: all the stages of the journey through the country and its times are connected with him - with his life and that of his ancestors; with his work as an actor and his public persona; with the cinema characters he portrayed. In them he focusses on himself - and the country from which all these faces originate. Seen from today: a different country, a different time. But their ghosts, whether prominent or nameless, are more effective than ever.