De alchemisten
Jona Honer
Netherlands | 2015 | 46 min
International Premiere
Language : Dutch
Subtitles : English, French
Sebastian and Joshua Ratha are brothers—by blood and in business. In Amsterdam, they have founded a financial start-up, “Arete Caerus”, a name worthy of a J.K Rowling character. For these two ne’er-do-wells get along marvellously in the domain of magical spells in the sacrosanct “market”. Whereas certain sociological works describe the emotional (therefore not always rational) behaviour of economic players, the Rathas think they’ve found the philosopher’s stone, having designed a software programme capable of automatically steering their investments by profiting from...the irrationality of others. Jona Honer has followed the beginnings of this curious project with a fully clinical boundary (camera almost always fixed, two types of shots). Of course, Up or Out constitutes a critical reflection on modern finance, seen through the small end of the telescope. But the filmmaker’s tour de force is to have constructed his documentary huis-clos like an ultra-contemporary rereading of the myth of Abel and Cain, proofed and corrected by trash TV: as if it had, one fine day, turned up at Lehman Brothers...
Emmanuel Chicon
