20/08/2013 - The Marc Bauder-directed documentary Master of the Universe, about the current financial crisis, won the Locarno Critics’ Week prize.

German filmmaker Marc Bauder’s latest documentary, Master of the Universe (photo), is an eerie, scary and insightful, feature-length interview with Rainer Voss, a former investment banker who talks about how the system is diseased in an empty office tower in Frankfurt’s financial district.

The film, produced by Bauderfilm and Austrian outfit NGF Geyrhalter Film (run by documentary luminary Nikolaus Geyrhalter), premiered at the Locarno Film Festival, where it won the Critics’ Week Prix SRG SSR, which comes with 8,000 Swiss Francs.

Now a “man of independent means,” Voss made over €100,000 a month when he worked in the financial world and made profits for his (unnamed) financial-institute employer of several million a day. Here he recounts how doing “one-nighters” or “two-nighters” in the office was the standard thing to do to get promoted. “You basically had to be willing to give up your life,” says Voss.

He insightfully speaks about the banking world’s unhealthy profit culture, which is only interested in delivering 10% more than the previous year. Employees are told the employer “doesn’t care how you do it,” and even speculating on the economies of entire countries, such as Greece or Portugal, is considered fair game.

Voss talks about his lack of private life, and seems to regret (though he doesn’t quite say it) to not have spent more time with his children. But he’s clearly a talented financial whizz, able to explain complex banking concepts in easily understandable terms. Bauder even lets him use the windows of the spookily empty office building to write his formulas and explanations.

“Banks have a Plan B for everything. But for this financial crisis, there is no Plan B,” says Voss toward the end, before talking about how “there is so much money in circulation [in the financial industry] that you can tackle whole countries with it now.” He adds: “There’s no way this is going to have a happy end.”

Though the documentary doesn’t reveal anything new, seeing it all so well-explained by an insider is nonetheless chilling, an effect augmented by its empty-office setting.