financial crisis
10 titles
Films about financial crises, frauds and the people inside them, from the Paris stock market of the 1920s to GameStop. Some of those people are breaking rules to make money, some are in the room when the numbers turn, and some are watching from outside.
In L'Argent, the tycoon Nicolas Saccard is nearly ruined by a rival, and his scheme to push up the price of his stock is a publicity stunt: the aviator Jacques Hamelin will fly across the Atlantic to Guyana and drill for oil. Bud Fox in Wall Street is an ambitious stockbroker who wins the corporate raider Gordon Gekko as a mentor by providing him with insider trading. Nick Leeson in Rogue Trader sets up options trading for Barings Bank in Singapore, and in his big first year he breaks trading rules and covers up losses. In Rising High, three corrupt real estate agents get rich in no time.
In Margin Call, a financial company lets its head of risk management go in the middle of an analysis. His protégé finishes it that night and finds the firm headed for disaster, and senior management prepares to do whatever it takes to limit the damage. In Default, a Bank of Korea monetary policy manager predicts a national financial crisis and is ignored. The IMF's managing director arrives a week before South Korea goes bust. The Big Short follows the hedge fund manager Michael Burry, who believes the US housing market is a bubble and bets against it with banks that think he is a crackpot. Adults in the Room is set inside the claustrophobic Eurogroup meetings that impose austerity on Greece.
Dumb Money follows everyday people against Wall Street. Keith Gill, a regular guy, sinks his life savings into GameStop stock and posts about it, and as the posts catch on, the lives of everyone following him change with his. In The Crash, which came out in 1932, after the Wall Street crash of 1929, Linda Gault, the wife of a Wall Street loser, has her eye on an Australian sheep rancher in Bermuda.
You watch the money move and keep asking who knew.
