The Edukators

By night, Jan and Peter burgle expensive villas to allow the interior to undergo an idiosyncratic metamorphosis. Furniture is piled up, CD players are put in the fridge and expensive collections of porcelain are dumped in the toilet. As explanation, a note is left behind with the text ‘you are too rich’ or ‘the good years are gone’. Signed: The Edukators. Who asks in the store whether his sports shoes are made in a kosher manner? Who is idealistic enough to say that he earns too much money? These are the questions that Hans Weingartner, himself a former activist, presents with satanic enjoyment in The Edukators. Weingartner is not a man to choose the easy way out. As a viewer, at first you feel sympathy for the idealist Jan and Peter, and for their girlfriend Jule, who has a debt of 100,000 euro to macho businessman Hardenberg after an uninsured car crash. But when Hardenberg comes home unexpectedly during an Edukator break-in, ideals seem less tenable than was thought. In panic, the Edukators end up kidnapping the businessman, bringing their methods suddenly and unpleasantly close to those of the Rote Armee Fraktion. When Hardenberg also turns out to be a former left-wing idealist himself, who can also make you sympathise with his transformation into a successful businessman, as a viewer you are again forced to decide your position. At the Cannes Film Festival, Weingartner’s idealist sparring match was nominated for the Golden Palm. (SdH)