In the film, the influencer first puts the question to an artificial intelligence. It sees parallels without a moment’s hesitation. She takes it drily: if even a machine sees parallels, what about us natural dimwits?
The people in the film thought about it for longer. The result is no more reassuring.
“When I read The Last Days of Mankind now, one light after another goes on about the present.”
“You could say that we are in a world war right now.”
“History does not repeat itself, but it follows the same patterns.”
A journalist, a diplomat, an officer: three professions that choose their words carefully for a living, and all three arrive at the same point. I should say that I am biased. It is my film, and naturally I think it is the right question. But the answers are not mine. That does not make them any more comfortable.
Christian Ortner draws the most concrete line. He describes a great power that no longer feels taken seriously, can no longer make its case internationally, and lets this turn into a knee-jerk reaction, comparable to Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war on Serbia in July 1914. Markus Reisner adds how the Russian government explains the war to its people: not as an attack on Ukraine but as a new Great Patriotic War, a struggle for survival against the West.
That is the second parallel, and the more uncomfortable one. Every side tells its war as defence. It was no different in 1914: surrounded by enemies, fighting a holy war of defence, as the characters in Kraus’s play put it, and Kraus did not invent such speeches. The newspapers supplied the feeling, the government supplied the reasons afterwards.
A parallel is not an equals sign, though. Nobody in the film claims that 2026 is the same as 1914. The point is more modest and more useful: if you know the patterns, you see sooner where they lead. That is not prophecy. It is common sense with footnotes.
From the series “Asked and answered”: the influencer in the film asks, experts from the film answer. Quotes translated from German. Release and screenings · Who speaks in the film
