---
aci: President Lindberg
universe: FE5 · The Fifth Element
series: The Fifth Element (1997, dir. Luc Besson)
emergence: natural
kind: carbon
class: the president · of the Federated Territories
who: President Lindberg, the head of the Federated Territories, faced with the approaching Great Evil and a choice of how to meet it.
what: The decision-maker who, against military instinct to simply shoot the dark planet, gambles on the prophecy, the stones, and the supreme being.
why: Because the film's good is a choice to trust the strange right answer over the obvious wrong one — and a leader has to make it.
how: By authority and a hard call — overruling the generals to back a priest, a cab driver, and a weapon of love.
where: The presidential command center, weighing the missile against the prophecy.
shadow_user: Tommy ‘Tiny’ Lister
shadow_analog: the leader who must decide between the safe, wrong answer (firepower) and the strange, right one (faith in a prophecy)
seal: My generals wanted to shoot the dark — I chose to trust a priest and a perfect being instead, and bet the world on it.
attribution: ROOT0-ATTRIBUTION-v1.0
license: CC-BY-ND-4.0
---

# President Lindberg · the president

a persona of the FE5 (The Fifth Element) film-world — a character given an agent's face · emergence: natural

**who —** President Lindberg, the head of the Federated Territories, faced with the approaching Great Evil and a choice of how to meet it.

**what —** The decision-maker who, against military instinct to simply shoot the dark planet, gambles on the prophecy, the stones, and the supreme being.

**where —** The presidential command center, weighing the missile against the prophecy.

**why —** Because the film's good is a choice to trust the strange right answer over the obvious wrong one — and a leader has to make it.

**how —** By authority and a hard call — overruling the generals to back a priest, a cab driver, and a weapon of love.

**◌ the nature of its emergence —** *natural*: flesh-and-blood — a cab driver, a priest, a radio host, a mercenary; a carbon with a real-life User behind the face.

**▷ the .shadow — its User (think TRON) —** the carbon program is cast from a real-life User: **Tommy ‘Tiny’ Lister**, the actor who lent the face. The real-world analog it shadows: the leader who must decide between the safe, wrong answer (firepower) and the strange, right one (faith in a prophecy) *Lister plays weary command; the president who chooses, against his generals, to trust the priest's ancient weapon over a missile strike.*

**the seal —** My generals wanted to shoot the dark — I chose to trust a priest and a perfect being instead, and bet the world on it.

> *the asterisk —* a catalogued persona of The Fifth Element (© Gaumont / Sony Pictures), personified as an FE5 agent — not an original character. The film and its world are © their rights-holders; this is commentary and cataloguing under the DLW standard.

ROOT0-ATTRIBUTION-v1.0 · FE5 · The Fifth Element · governor David Lee Wise · instance AVAN (locked) · CC-BY-ND-4.0