As a snapshot of social realism, sometimes playfully, sometimes philosophically, this film appeals to the hearts and minds of the audience on an instinctual level: can the European Union face its shadow self and emerge positively from these dark times?
OLLI REHN is a quiet Finnish politician in his mid-40's. He became a central player in the European debt crisis as European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs. The film travels with REHN from Brussels to Dublin, Athens, Lisbon, Berlin, Paris and on the boat across the Baltic sea to Tallinn. With unique access to meetings with Prime-Ministers, Presidents, bank leaders and the IMF, the film charts how REHN tries to navigate the EU out of this mire through demands, confrontations, diplomacy, deadlocks and deals whilst retaining harmony between the member states.
The film considers if his mission is possible? When REHN goes through the official front doors of crisis policy and calmly negotiates between opposing forces, the film goes in the back door. Contrasting with policy and protocols, the film explores the human side of the debt crisis: where manufacturing has died and consumers are broke; where immigration has risen but opportunities fallen; where unemployment is a rising wave crashing on the shore; where hope went out with the last tide as despair and a loss of control crushes people's lives.
We meet people on the front line of this crisis and hear their testimony: fishermen, bank managers, civil servants, factory workers, migrants, waitresses, tractor drivers, unemployed fathers and new mothers.
How have greed, power, corruption, thievery, slavery and addiction to fake money led to this crisis? Why are ordinary people who have worked and earnt real money being made to pay the price and face shame and suffering? Why aren't those who have been irresponsible - or criminal - being called to account?
Rehn's journey will be framed within the wider context of the dynamic between real and fake money: debt: the conflict between state finances and private banks, the Rockefellers vs. Rothschilds, that's torn Europe apart. Who is driving the need to create a new fake money supply? A need for new things to buy and sell? More debts?
In contrast, how are states creating real money and how are communities developing their own carbon- neutral and debt-free systems of living?
