Die Delegation

A German TV journalist is sent to a UFO congress and meets several crackpots plus a Canadian lady who suspects she has had an encounter with alien astronauts. He begins to research into her story, with amazing results.

The UFO congress actually took place in Mainz, Germany. The rest is so well-invented that the TV station got several letters like "this is the story of the century, why don't you do anything?!"

Astounding film about reporter Kohut, who does some research for a German TV station about a U.F.O. sighting in Canada and, thinking he is really on to something, jeopardizes his career by continuing the investigation obsessively. Interviewing witnesses and experts, Kohut comes closer and closer to revealing the truth. Most intriguingly, his story is revealed post-mortem by showing the reels of film discovered in his wrecked car. Remarkable science-fiction mockumentary caused some viewers to panic when originally broadcast. Fascinating, thought-provoking, a must-see, much too little-known. From conspiracy specialist Erler (FLEISCH, PROFESSOR COLUMBUS).

When I saw "Die Delegation" somewhere in the seventies, I was totally caught by the atmosphere and the main actor. Walter Kohut, as a stoic, imperturbable reporter, hunting the unknown, had possibly his best role ever. His sonorous voice alone bears a significant part of the movie.

In the beginning we learn that the main character, said reporter, named Will Roczinsky, is dead, and that there is footage found from his voyage that led to his death. After that, the footage is shown.

For a movie from 1970, the announcement of the footage (by a well known TV show moderator of that time, if I'm not wrong) is very convincing. The footage itself is artfully made like real footage, and many people then thought it was real.

The footage shows sometimes - if one follows the tension - frightening things, frightening with no amount of gore or horror or monsters, but with pieces of mystery and imagination.

I am no movie specialist, but I would say, this movie is a mother at least for the genre of "Found Footage" movies, and maybe the "X-Files" from a technical point of withholding information from the audience, or at least not interpreting it, to raise tension.

No movie since, in my personal opinion, used the mockumentary style more sophisticated.

Besides that, we also follow the fate of a man whose personal integrity, whose life, and whose mental stability fades while hunting the shadows of the unknown. He meets persons who encountered the unknown, he tries to stay at the usual reporter's distance, but he fails while being trapped in his obsession to find the extraterrestrials or at least their traces.

I would highly recommend this little masterwork for a remake. It could be funny with all the UFO hysteria since, and those millions of fakes today, in a world where no place seems to be Iphone-free anymore, and where every child can fake an UFO encounter with it's laptop in a few minutes and upload it to Youtube.

The movie is stunning, both in its dramaturgy as well as in its philosophical depth ("Tiefgang"). -- A masterpiece! Almost forgotten and in German, a "Nachkriegsfilm", financed by public TV in Western Germany.

This gem changed the way I was thinking about the so-called "UFO-phenomenon". If you can get hold of a copy of it (hopefully with subtitles if you cannot understand German), and into the broader perspective, then try it.

A word of caution though: the movie itself is not an action movie but is delivered as a rather dry and "boring" mockumentary. If you are not into thought provoking stuff you might be disappointed.