Fragments from a country undergoing evolution: Aggregate gathers observations from Germany in 2016 and 2017. SPD parliamentarians in a training workshop. A BILD newspaper editorial team meeting. An art-themed guided tour of the Reichstag. A TV report by station MDR. A crowd chanting »the lying press«. Marie Wilke’s clear-visioned concept delivers focused camera work, hard cuts and cuts to black – forming a contemporary account of the times. Aggregate is not a story. The film is a collection of images, impressions and fragments of the current political and media scene in democratic Germany.

»It was important to me that the film remains open and does not offer any patterns of explanation. Aggregate doesn’t want to be evidence for any particular view of things. It’s up to each viewer how to relate the individual fragments to each other. (…) Documentary observation of concrete events and actions opens my eyes for abstract constructs like democracy, society and institution. By viewing the concrete situations, I also become aware of my own role within the construct of society and of the necessity to position myself. The starting-point of my last film Staatsdiener (public servant) was the question of how people, as police officers, implement the abstract idea of state power. One starting-point for Aggregate, too, was the tension between the ideal of democracy and the real interplay of human factors in society. Communication is the connection between these parts.«
– Marie Wilke in conversation with Birgit Kohler (Berlinale Forum)