The director views Waldheim’s candidacy as a moment when Austria could no longer see itself as an innocent casualty of Nazi rule. The country had often presented itself, we’re told, as “Hitler’s first victim,” and people like Waldheim as honest soldiers caught on the wrong side. The truth, it seems, was a lot more complicated, and disturbing.

Beckermann, who narrates, makes no claims to objectivity. She tells us at the outset that she participated in protests against Waldheim. Some of the most fascinating parts of her film show the growth and coalescing of her fellow activists, who became invested in stopping his candidacy. As such, “The Waldheim Waltz” sometimes dances between a brisk, present-tense recounting of political history and a more wandering, personal reflection on the filmmaker’s history.

But it leans more toward the political. Beckermann wants not so much to contextualize as to invoke — with the hope, perhaps, that placing us in the middle of this debate will create its own context. Indeed, watching Waldheim’s campaign, it’s hard not to think about the present day — from the emergence of old hatreds, to the closure of elite ranks around their own, to the weaponizing of nationalism against the truth. The film may end in 1986, but the darkness it reveals still looms.