Sigmar Gabriel

The grounding of the container ship “Ever Given” blocked the Suez Canal in 2021. Global supply chains were disrupted. Was this just a harbinger of the enormous new challenges facing the system of “globalization”? In an evolving world order shaped by the tension between democracies and autocracies, German companies are forced to continue doing business with countries like China despite geopolitical risks, because they need China as both a market for their products and a supplier of raw materials.

The film shines a light onto federal chancellor Angela Merkel and her now ending 16-year-long tenure. An era, not an episode. And a vagarious relationship history between the chancellor and the Germans. Who has changed whom here?

Gerhard Schröder was the last SPD chancellor. He was always a controversial figure within his party. To some, he was a self-centered individual and a careerist; to others, he was a gifted campaigner and a successful modernizer. It is undisputed that his popularity played a decisive role in helping the SPD seize power in 1998. But what remains of the Red-Green coalition project that came to such an abrupt end in 2005? The Agenda reforms? The energy transition? The SPD’s identity crisis? Since Gerhard Schröder’s defeat by Angela Merkel in 2005, the party has been in decline; the label “people’s party” no longer seems to apply. What responsibility does the SPD’s most recent chancellor bear for this decline? How did the unprecedented Agenda 2010 reform program come about in the first place?