Surprise parti

June 2010, Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland: the local elections saw comedian Jón Gnarr elected as mayor following a punk-style election campaign that had initially been launched as a hoax. To mock the empty rhetoric of the established political parties, Gnarr founded ‘The Best Party’, which promised everything and anything, on the basis that no elected representative ever keeps their promises. Ultimately committed to a sincere endeavour, the comedian went on to develop direct and participatory democracy during his single term in office.
‘In the truly inverted world, the true is a moment of the false,’ wrote Debord in 1967 in The Society of the Spectacle. In recounting this zany epic, made up of real and fictional elements, Faustine Noguès offers a wild theatrical score for a large and flexible cast. In this political comedy, we encounter everything from zombie parties to a rescue plan for a municipal electricity company. Mind-blowing.