'THE EDUKATORS' – 'DIE FETTEN JAHRE SIND VORBEI' (2005). SYNOPSIS, by Rabea Ottenhues

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Young and full of antipathy to the system they live in, flatmates Jan and Peter have their own way of fighting social injustice.

At night, they break into mansions in Berlin's rich neighborhoods, not stealing or destroying things, but disarranging the furniture and leaving nothing but a mess and a note saying ‘You are too rich’ or ‘The years of plenty are gone’. Their aim: leaving the residents with a feeling of insecurity and giving them food for thought about their wealth.

After a car crash, Peter's girlfriend Jule has to pay off her debt to a wealthy manager, whose car she ran into. That exactly is where the very same manager and owner of a villa, Hardenberg, comes into play. While Peter is on holiday, Jule and Jan begin a romance and, in an unreasonable, carefree mood, decide to break into Hardenberg's mansion.

Moments later, you find the three of them, Peter, Jule and Jan, sitting at a table in an Alps hut, smoking a joint - with Hardenberg, who they kidnapped after being caught off guard in his house and who now reminisces about his time as a revolutionist, practicing free love and knowing people like the leader of the student revolt, Rudi Dutschke.

But this, for sure, is not the happy end of the story. Things get more and more complicated, with Hardenberg among the three of them.

In the end, The Edukators is more than a well-played movie (those of you who watched Inglorious Basterds will surely recognize Daniel Brühl) that is certainly deeply critical of society, but in a new, sometimes even funny way, that at least left me with the feeling of wanting to change the world.