Big Manni
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Big Manni |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 2018 |
| length | 90 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Niki Stein |
| script |
Johannes W. Betz , Jürgen Rennecke |
| production | Sabine Tettenborn |
| music | Jacki Engelken |
| camera | Michael Schreitel |
| cut | Corina Dietz |
| occupation | |
| |
Big Manni is a German TV film directed by Niki Stein from 2018 . The television satire is based on real events around the FlowTex company in Ettlingen, Baden . The premiere took place at the Festival of German Films 2018, the first broadcast on May 1, 2019 in the first with a subsequent documentary Big Manni - Big Money - The true story of a billion- dollar fraud with a review and contemporary witnesses of the events at that time.
action
Manfred Brenner was already an enterprising kid as a child, when he was trading in toy cars and even then was only called Big Manni . As soon as he has grown up, he does this on a large scale and imports cheap cars from Italy, which he then sells again at a profit on the German market. He then established himself with Flow Color in Ettlingen in the mid-1980s as a manufacturer of facade paints and even became the regional market leader. After a small depression and tax problems, Brenner quickly founds his company Flowtex, with which he wants to achieve the big breakthrough. He had discovered a new horizontal drilling system developed by Armin Pfortner, which was to revolutionize underground pipeline construction. He only lacks the necessary capital to implement this project, because the banks do not give him any loans due to the tax debts. So he fakes a robbery so that he can start the new company with the insurance money. But sobered, he has to discover that this drilling system has weaknesses and he has problems getting orders. With a positive appraisal and his powers of persuasion, he succeeds in getting a loan of 20 million, but orders are still missing and he can only show the bank two of the 10 drills that are supposedly produced. Brenner simply explains that the other drills are in use. Coincidentally, Dr. Stoschek from the Landesbank paid attention to the drilling system and approved a further 20 million after he was shown the drill in action, which Brenner had arranged in a clever way. However, FlowTex still did not have any orders and so Brenner changes his strategy. As long as the banks have confidence in his product and keep granting loans, that should be enough for him. For Brenner, it is only a matter of time before their system is mature enough that FlowTex will actually be the market leader and then the loans could also be repaid. But it is not that far yet and to show orders, Brenner again resorted to a trick. Proforma rents the Flow Color Brenners machines, which only exist on paper and very convincingly leads the creditors to believe that the machines are in practical use nationwide.
The only one who could endanger Brenner's further entrepreneurial and social advancement is of all people his old schoolmate Thomas Bärlach. He is a detective and was responsible for investigating the break-in. Since he cannot find a culprit, he now suspects that there is insurance fraud. When he tells Brenner about it, he lets his relationships play out to stop Barlach's further ambitions.
After four years of further development, there is a new prototype of the drill that Brenner is marketing to banks and politicians in an effective way. The creation of jobs opens all doors for him and even Arab financiers are becoming aware of him. So he continues to expand his bogus business and only ever presents his creditors with individual objects from what are alleged to be 1,300, which otherwise only exist on paper. Brenner is so highly regarded by banks and politicians that no one would initially think that the entrepreneur was playing with the wrong cards. Only Thomas Bärlach has not resigned himself to being "put on ice". He researched Brenner's business meticulously and with his results can finally convince the authorities to initiate an investigation against FlowTex . Brenner then went to Argentina with his family for a while and consulted with his brother on how to proceed. He actually finds an opportunity and Bärlach's initiative comes to nothing. However, Brenner is becoming more and more aware that it will not go on forever. Nevertheless, he is now even planning to go public in order to raise money to service his loans.
In the end, Thomas Bärlach succeeds in proving that Brenner had only made sham deals. The alleged production facilities for his horizontal drills in Spain did not exist at all and after years Bärlach is the first to take a serious interest in them. Now the whole scaffolding of lies around Brenner begins to collapse and Bärlach is finally heard by the public prosecutor's office. Brenner can be arrested at the end of Bärlach.
background
Big Manni was produced by the Polyphon Film- und Fernsehgesellschaft on behalf of SWR Fernsehen and ARD Degeto and was filmed in Karlsruhe , Baden-Baden , Stuttgart and the surrounding area from June 23 to July 23, 2016 .
The television satire deals with one of the largest cases of white-collar crime in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany , in which between 1994 and 1999 a loss of almost 5 billion D-Marks occurred.
reception
Audience rating
The first broadcast of Big Manni on May 1, 2019 was seen by 4.68 million viewers in Germany and achieved a market share of 15.0 percent for Das Erste .
Reviews
Tilmann P. Gangloff from Tittelbach.tv wrote: “This story might not have been accepted as a fictional script: far too implausible. The FlowTex scandal, when a clever fraudster turned over around 5 billion marks in air deals, was a provincial farce typical of the megalomaniac 90s. Unfortunately, 'Big Manni' [...] gives the impression that director Niki Stein did not trust the real satirical potential of the plot and therefore violently trimmed it to comedy. ”“ The staging [lacks] a certain sophistication. Perhaps a tragic comedy or a docudrama would have been the more appropriate setting for this ludicrous material. "
A "witty crooks piece" called Julian Miller of Quotenmeter.de this story, but he also wondered: "Is it adequate to tell the perversions of commercial crime as somehow mitfühlige comedy to make the criminals from egomania and greed while the hero and To let him be a nice guy despite all the problematization? "" How cleverly contextualized and pleasantly unobtrusive «Big Manni» describes all the striking unbelievable things, on the other hand, can be very pleasing, while Hans-Jochen Wagner with his engaging presence credibly describes the esprit can also come from talented impostors. At least in southern German banks, this film deserves a large audience. "
Christian Buß wrote for Spiegel.de : "A world market leader in soaping: As a 'Big Manni' Hans-Jochen Wagner fools politics and banks - a farce about the real entrepreneur Manfred Schmider, who got more than four billion marks."
Heike Hupertz from the FAZ said: “As a spectator, you spend most of the time with the characters on the golf course, which may be realistic, but gives little drive to the drama.” The film “is neither funny nor serious enough. If there is big fraud as a comedy, then it is better to be as exaggerated as in the completely fictional fraud grotesque Beware of People (with Charly Hübner and Michael Maertens) by Arne Feldhusen. "
Web links
- Big Manni in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Big Manni at Fernsehserien.de
- Big Manni at crew united
Individual evidence
- ↑ Big Manni at crew united
- ↑ Audience at quotenmeter.de.
- ^ Tilmann P. Gangloff : Hans-Jochen Wagner, Betz / Rennecke, Niki Stein. “People see what they believe”, accessed on Tittelbach.tv on April 2, 2020.
- ↑ Julian Miller: Big Manni at Quotenmeter.de , accessed on 2 April 2020th
- ↑ Christian Buß: Big Manni makes big money. Or not at Spiegel.de , accessed on April 2, 2020.
- ↑ Heike Hupertz: " Drilled with hot air" at faz.net , accessed on April 2, 2020.