“The Candidate” is one of the three great collaborative documentaries supervised by Alexander Kluge, the others being “Germany in Autumn” and “War and Peace”. This time the collective reflects on the Bavarian prime minister and German defense minister Franz Josef Strauß who became most infamous in Germany because of the so-called “Spiegel-affair” which designates the annulment of the freedom of press and illegimate detention of various journalists in 1962. Almost two decades later Kluge & Co. decided to take a thorough look at the man who regarded it as one of his main goals to supply the Federal Republic of Germany with nuclear weapons, praised Pinochet’s military regime in Chile, was suspected numerous times of corruption and in 1979 attempted to get himself into Germany’s foremost office as candidate for Federal Chancellor of the Republic. Strauß’s greatest attempt ultimately failed, but the film remains as an important reminder of the fragility of democratic values and deserves to be seen by a wider audience still today.