Manifestos are depicted by 12 different characters (13 including the prologue voiceover), among them a school teacher, factory worker, choreographer, punk, newsreader, scientist, puppeteer, widow, and homeless man.

Rosefeldt discussed with Blanchett her role as Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes' film I'm Not There, which influenced the conception of the project.

[7][8][9] Blanchett said she was intrigued by the opportunity to perform multiple roles in a figurative context, noting that "on film, you're usually inviting an audience into a very literal narrative experience.

[6] She found the material "absurd" and provocative, and Rosefeldt added that the humour in the work "does help discover that some of these texts were not written with 100 percent total sincerity".

[12] It is a coproduction of the Ruhrtriennale, Schiwago Film GmbH, and the Berlin National Gallery, in cooperation with Bayerischer Rundfunk, the Burger Collection Hong Kong, and the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg.

[16][17] The conditions under which the crew and actress worked in the Berlin winter, including the very tight time frame, allowed little room for improvisation.

Cooke S4 lenses were combined with two Angénieux Optimo Zooms, which were used for "longer focal lengths and flexible second unit shots".

Krauss aimed for a natural look, noting that "as in almost all of [Rosefeldt's] works, there is enough abstraction through either deceleration in long takes and slow motion, or unnatural perspectives like high top-shots".

[18][14] In 2019, the film was displayed on 13 screens at Washington D.C.'s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, where it was part of a larger exhibition entitled "Manifesto: Art X Agency".

The website's consensus reads: "Laugh-out-loud humor and Cate Blanchett's tour de force performance(s) make Manifesto worth watching, even if the subject matter is too esoteric for all but a few.

"[33] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 72 out of 100, based on 21 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

[34] Dan Rule of The Sydney Morning Herald said that the project is a "remarkable exploration of cultural and cinematic tropes and expectations, as well as the jarring, dislocating effect of context on content" and praised Blanchett's "sheer presence and acumen as an actor".

[35] Reviewing an exhibition of the multi-screen installation, Jane Howard of Daily Review wrote that Rosefeldt "plays with the tension of bringing distinct thinking together", and while "the screens at first seem to invite solo viewing", walking further into the room shifts their arrangements as Manifesto "increasingly leans into the sound-bleed and an unspoken stand-off between characters".

[38] Joe McGovern of Entertainment Weekly called the film "operatic" and an "unexpectedly robust experience, with some segments that are hilariously droll".

[39] The New York Times's Glenn Kenny described Manifesto as an "oblique examination and critique of political and art history and their various interactions over the 20th century", and considered its feature film form to be a "very elaborate intellectual exercise, immaculate in every technical detail" and "both witty and provocative".