The Edukators

Hans Weingartner writes and directs The Edukators, a German drama about young idealists who rebel against the system in a very unusual way, they break into rich people's mansions while they're not home and move around all the furniture and everything they see, and then leave messages like "Your days of plenty are numbered" or "You have too much money". They never vandalize or steal anything, because they are not burglars, they just want to bring fear into these people's lives as they know that someone has been watching them and has been into their homes.

Daniel Bruhl from Goodbye Lenin! plays Jan and Stipe Erceg plays Peter, and they are The Edukators. But while Peter goes to Barcelona for a few days on vacation, his girlfriend Jule (played by Julia Jentsch), who recently moved in with them, finds out about what they do all night, and so after getting drunk she convinces Jan to go break into Hardenberg's villa. Hardenberg (Burghart Klaubner) is a rich guy she has a past with. She was in a car accident and hit his super expensive car, she didn't have insurance, and so she had to pay everything, and still is, or isn't actually, which is the reason why she got evicted of the apartment and had to go live with Peter.
While they're breaking into the house, Hardenberg comes back from his business trip and finds them there, and recognizes Jule, so they have no other choice than to kidnap him, and after Peter comes back, they all leave the city for to Jule's uncle's rural country house so they can think about what to do.

When they get there, they sort of befriend Hardenberg, who tells them how he used to be just like them when he was younger. He has this great speech about how he slowly changed from the liberal he was, but then his work paid off, he got married, children, a house, and so he needed security, and so one day he found himself voting conservative. The 4 of them debate during the entire movie about their ideas, and we are lectured about 10 year old children in Asia making our Nike shoes and stuff like that, which could bore some people, specially who knows all about that, but I feel it's necessary for the movie to work, since they had no way to show all that kind like The Motorcycle Diaries did for example. And these conversations make for around an hour of the movie, making for very smart and intelligent scenes which work excellent thanks to the great chemistry between the actors.

With a great soundtrack including Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah which is played 3 times near the end (with great results) and songs from several punk rock German bands, and a great cinematography by Daniela Knapp and Matthias Schellenberg who give us amazing visuals of Germany, Hans Weingartner's The Edukators educate us about the injustices people suffer in the world, making us want to be freed from the system, and it succeeds, at least with me. If money wasn't a problem, I'd love to be an Edukator.