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When artist and filmmaker Johannes Büttner stumbled upon an old school acquaintance he hadn’t heard from for years online, it felt like serendipity. He had recently reunited with yet another old friend, also a filmmaker, Julian Vogel, with the interest of making a film about the rise in authoritarianism worldwide, and it just so happened that the friend he rediscovered online was now working as a health guru whose practice was deeply intertwined with far-right ideology. The result of that fortuitous reencounter is “Soldiers of Light,” world premiering this week at documentary festival Visions du Réel.
“Soldiers of Light” trails David, also known as “Mister Raw.” The young man is part of the increasingly popular “healers” scene with links to the far-right. As the filmmakers embed themselves in David’s house slash commune, they take a special interest in one of Mister Raw’s pupils, Timo, who is hoping to cure his psychotic delusions with food supplements and fasting. What happens to Timo in the course of the film is, sadly, the very opposite.
Speaking with Variety ahead of the film’s premiere, Büttner says he began noticing a growth in movements such as the one led by David right after COVID, when there were several protests against government restrictions. “I realized that these forces were very present in our society,” he adds. “I wanted to take a closer look. They draw images of utopian ideas and societies, which historically is something that aligns with the left, but these are very much right-wing movements.”
This is when he found David online, a guy who went to his same primary school and who was very present in his childhood. When he first approached David about the documentary, Büttner was “surprised” about how open he was about the idea. “That first encounter was really weird because we grew up together in a way, but he was deeply embedded in an idelogy that was so foreign to me.”
Vogel came onto the project early on and the two decided to tackle it through an observational approach, Vogel handling the camera, Büttner the sound, so the crew would be as small and undetectable as possible.
“This was the first time I took on a project following my trilogy on people who lost their relatives in right-wing terror,” says Vogel, referring to his 2023 “Einzeltäter Trilogy.” For this project, I proposed to Johannes that we take a direct cinema approach of almost pure observation, where we would try to blend in and not interact much with our subjects. Because I come from journalism, I had the feeling that arguing with conspiracy theorists was not the most fruitful approach to finding out what this phenomenon is about.”
Courtesy of Visions du Réel
A great part of those early days was dedicated to understanding the aesthetics of the project as well as developing trust with their subjects. Of the former, Vogel observed how David and his followers were constantly filming themselves on smartphones and tried to create a visual cacophony, often filming the LCD screens of their devices. On the latter, the director points out that, although he shares widely different sociopolitical views from David, the two connected over commonalities such as vegetarianism and an interest in health.
“We talked about health and sports and would have easygoing conversations, so it was a fruitful dynamic,” adds Vogel. “They trusted us. We never lied to them. We never said we were making an advertisement for them. We told them we didn’t agree with the fundamentals of their worldview but didn’t engage in discussion. It was a different approach from some other mainstream media and journalism in general.”
Of course, the duo was concerned with the possibility of amplifying David’s message. “When you do a film like this, you automatically have to think about whether or not you are giving these people a platform,” says Büttner. “We had a lot of constant dialogue, Julian and I, about how not to amplify their voices. Our editor took a really important role in showing what the hierarchy system was really like.”
One way of diluting the focus on David’s preaching was to follow Timo’s story. That choice would change much of the course of the film due to Timo’s tragic, untimely death, which catapulted the directors into a storm of bureaucracy and emotional turmoil. “In the beginning, it all seemed straightforward, but then we saw ourselves mediating a lot of hard conversations, talking with authorities and medical institutions while being in very close contact with Timo’s family and trying to help them in the most overwhelming of situations,” explained Büttner.
Still, Vogel hopes that “Soldiers of Light” will offer some nuance to discussions on the human aspect of the rise of the far-right. “We don’t need this film to warn us about how the rise of fascism and authoritarianism worldwide is bad and dangerous as we see it with people like Trump and [Argentina’s president] Javier Milei,” he says. “What the film can do is give us a more profound analysis of this phenomenon.”
“What we see in the film is connected to our everyday world living in neoliberal late capitalism where we all strive to be the best version of ourselves to perform better, otherwise, we might not be able to survive,” he adds. “A parallel I see between my creative life and Timo’s is that David paid Timo with the promise of a better future. That’s something I know well from making films and making art. If you’re a filmmaker or a journalist, you are often paid in promises in the hopes that at some point you maybe find some success. I hope this film conveys this feeling instead of picturing our subjects through a lens of otherness.”
Karoline Henkel of Woodwater Films handles world sales for “Soldiers of Light.”
