In light of the severe economic crisis affecting the world due to the emerging corona virus, we may need to go back in time and take a look at the 2008 crisis and explore its depths through films that documented its details and monitored its repercussions.
The Spanish magazine "Muynegociosyeconomia" shed light on cinema's approach to the mortgage crisis, which erupted in the United States in 2007 and led to a severe financial crisis on the global level, carrying a wonderful wave of films and documentaries that were able to explain and simplify the phenomenon in a useful way. And entertaining.
In this report I have dealt with the best of those films, most of which are American production.
According to the magazine, these films can help us understand what happened a decade ago, and draw some important lessons in light of the current economic crisis left by the Covid-19 epidemic.
1. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2009)
This part may not have gained the same popularity as the movie in its first version in 1987, which exposed financial corruption on Wall Street during the 1980s, but it was interesting and went a long way in exposing illegal practices, and it attracted great criticism after the premiere.
2. Too Big to Fail (2011)
The story of Too Big to Fail is based on a book written by New York Times journalist and financial columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, in which he talked about the collapse of Lehman Brothers. The film highlights the attempts of the Secretary of the Treasury and the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System to avoid the repercussions of the disaster, but the vast amount of accurate financial information presented in the film may be difficult for non-professionals to absorb.
3. Inside Job
Inside Job won an Oscar in 2011, and some have taken it as a "Bible" in understanding the global financial crisis and its causes. The film showed the role of banks, major financial institutions and pressure groups in the occurrence of the mortgage crisis, and most importantly, the absence of mechanisms to punish the corrupt.
4. Marginal call (2011)
American film critic David Senby called this cinematic work "the best Wall Street movie ever." Margin Call chronicles the actions of a group of employees and executives at a New York investment bank during the first 24 hours of the financial meltdown.
5. The Queen of Versailles (2012)
The Queen of Versailles is a comedic documentary that tells the story of Jacqueline and David Siegel, a wealthy couple with seven children who own the Westgate Resorts Company. The couple are seeking to build the largest home in the United States, and with the outbreak of the crisis, they are forced to suspend construction of this 25,000-square-meter architectural masterpiece inspired by the Palace of Versailles. The film depicts the details of the crisis, tragically and funny at the same time.
6. The Return of Marx (2011)
This German documentary, Marx Reloaded, was directed by Jason Parker, a British writer specializing in contemporary French philosophy, in which he analyzed the 2008 crisis in light of Marxist philosophy. Can communism be the solution to the crisis? This is a question that philosophers such as Slavoj Zizek, Peter Sloterdijk, Antonio Negri and others try to answer during the film.
7. The Wizard of Lies (2017)
The "wizard of lies" sheds light on the pyramid scheme devised by American investor Bernard Madoff (played by Robert De Niro) that led to his being sentenced to 150 years in prison.
8. The Big Short (2016)
Based on the book of the same name "The Big Short," written by journalist and former Lehman Brothers employee Michael Lewis. The film tells the story of a group of speculators who anticipate the mortgage crisis and decide to bet on the matter for huge profits. In the film, this moral dilemma is depicted, when some individuals wait for the outbreak of the crisis to accumulate enormous wealth, regardless of the catastrophic damage inflicted on millions of citizens.
9. 99 homes (2014)
99Homes tells the story of a victim of the 2008 crisis, a family head who has been evicted from his home and no longer has any source of income. The father is forced to work with the owner who evicted him from his home, and who assigns him the task of evicting other families in order to return him to his home.
10. The Smartest Men in the Room (2005)
The smarts guys in the room documentary discusses one of the preludes to the 2008 crisis, and was nominated for an Oscar for best documentary in 2006. It tells the story of a small oil company that, in less than two decades, became one of the top ten oil companies in the United States. Then she collapsed resoundingly.