Films by Pluramon

Germany 2022, 94 min
by Birgit Schulz

A smart and unsparing documentary portrait of art adviser Helge Achenbach. It starts with him being sentenced to jail for defrauding his clients for tens of millions. The emerging character is fascinatingly complex and controversial, brokering extremely expensive and giant artworks first to banks and corporations, then to celebrity billionaires. It's no wonder his life's story is closely related to the absurd developments of prices for modern art over the last forty years. [FFCGN 2022]

2021, 98 min
by Valentin Thurn

To realize your dream sometimes you have to make a cut and leave your hamsterwheel. Van Bo builds 'Tiny Houses' to create cheap housing. Carl-Heinrich invented a zeppelin transporting heavy payloads float through the air and got bankrupt – but still continued. Line does not want her children to go to school. Joy builds floating islands out of trash. And Günther dreams to be one of the first persons to colonize Mars. Director Valentin Thurn accompanies five people searching for alternatives. What makes them able to take their dreams seriously and keep faith?

Switzerland, Germany 2020, 104 min
by Luzia Schmid

Prosperity on the one side, misery on the other: just how directly the two can be connected comes to light in Luzia Schmid’s film about the meteoric rise of her hometown of Zug upon becoming a tax haven.Swiss filmmaker Luzia Schmid traces the rise of her hometown of Zug and its townspeople, who have succeeded in becoming very rich by converting their town into one of the world’s leading tax havens. Even her immediate family is implicated in Zug’s politics and economy. And yet a tax haven is also part of the wider economy and thus we also learn about international rivalries in the tax game: the invention of the first shell company, the carefully guarded banking secrecy and the development of offshore tax shelters. “Race to the bottom” is a phrase often used to describe this destructive momentum, which, with tax scandals involving companies like Apple, Amazon and Starbucks, reached its low point in the financial crisis of 2008. In Zug, success came with its fair share of problems, too: shady commercial lawyers and commodities dealers settled down here, plundering Third World countries from their safe base in Switzerland. The town came to symbolise the injustices of this world. Luzia Schmid seeks out answers about morals and motivation and charts the town’s position in the international tax game. A business film with a personal take on the rise of a Swiss tax haven evolves into a radical and subtle reflection on double standards and collective repression.