OUR NEW PRESIDENT: An Election Seen Through Russian Eyes

As unappealing as it probably seems to watch a movie about the 2016 election (that is if you didn’t vote for Trump), Our New President turns the nightmare into surreal entertainment.

The documentary presents the lead up, election night, and aftermath all through the lens of Russian news channel RT, Russian YouTube videos, and a history of modern Russian news.

The Fox and the Bear

Put bluntly, RT makes Fox News look like those races of neutral aliens from Futurama. It is so outrageous in the info it presents as news and fact that it is more akin to Infowars than the legitimate news channel that it is in Russia. It is that heady mix of hilarious and terrifying as it presents propaganda as stone-cold facts in such a way that feels like parody but that we know is real enough to set the tone for the political discourse of their viewers.

The movie doesn’t really follow a narrative and simply shows a variety of samplings of how RT tore down Hillary Clinton with accusations of illness, madness, “retardation,” and being cursed by having contact with the skeleton of a dead princess discovered at an archaeological dig. It also shows the ways in which RT hyped up Trump during his campaign, took credit for his victory, and then how they turned on him when he bad mouthed them in public.

Propaganda Comedy

The movie is somewhere between 1984-esque nightmare and absurd comedy. Such is the way of this kind of heightened propaganda when it is viewed from outside. Consider the way in which the North Korean regime is portrayed in their ridiculous claims about their Dear Leader. Yes, it’s funny that he claims to have made 18 holes in one on his first round, but it’s also horrific that he essentially rules over a country that is a prison camp.

With Our New President, the comedy comes from how insane the things are that are presented as facts, as well as how deadpan and seriously they’re approached. The horror comes from the fact that RT is the government’s official news channel, with other more partisan news services being shut down. There is also, of course, the simple, ongoing horror that is the current American political system, and the growing prevalence in America of the kind of news on display in Our New President.

With no central voice guiding it, it feels aimless, not sure whether it is a horror movie or a comedy. Sometimes it feels like a hard hitting look at Russian media and other times it feels like it is all some absurd parody that we should be laughing at. Of course, it’s possible that while we live in such times as these, it is hard to laugh at this topic and hard to enjoy anything that talks about it that doesn’t offer up a solution to our current woes. Our New President seems to only show the symptoms of the problem with no hope of a cure (or any hint that there even is one).

Final Thoughts: Our New President

A very strange movie that presents YouTube videos of pro-Trump songs, Putin playing hockey, and a truncated history of Russian media, Our New President is an interesting idea that doesn’t quite soar. It goes for letting the Russian news about Trump tell its own story, but a bit more structure or narration would have made the whole thing feel clearer and stronger, while at the moment it feels like a clip show of wacky foreign news.

Time will be kind to Our New President though. While Trump remains in office it is hard to look at his ridiculousness and find humour, but maybe once he’s gone and we don’t have to see him everyday it will be easier to watch this movie and see something that is entertaining and informative rather than a reminder that some deplorable shit went down and Trump becoming the most powerful person in the free world was the result.

Our New President played at a number of film festivals around the world, among them Melbourne International Film Festival.