Who Am I - No system is safe

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Movie
Original title Who Am I - No system is safe
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2014
length 105 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
JMK 14
Rod
Director Baran bo Odar
script Baran bo Odar,
Jantje Friese
production Quirin Berg ,
Max Wiedemann
music Michael Kamm ,
Jaro Messerschmidt
camera Nikolaus Summerer
cut Robert Rzesacz
occupation

Who Am I - No system is safe is a German thriller by director Baran bo Odar from 2014. The film is set in Berlin and is about a group of hackers that wants to attract global attention. The title of the film is an allusion to the Unix command whoami , which outputs the name of the user account at the operating system level.

The film premiered in the Contemporary World Cinema category at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival . The cinema release in Germany was on September 25, 2014.

action

The wanted hacker Benjamin Engel alias WhoAmI has turned himself in to the police, but only wants to speak to the Europol investigator Hanne Lindberg, who has been suspended from duty . This conversation between Benjamin and Lindberg in an interrogation room forms the framework of the film, while its story is shown in flashbacks .

The inconspicuous Benjamin had a difficult childhood. His father left his mother before Benjamin was born, and his mother took her own life when Benjamin was eight years old. Since then he has lived with his grandmother. Out of the feeling that he is of no importance in the real world, he finally finds his talent and purpose in the virtual world and lives this out with small hacker attacks. His great role model in the darknet is the star hacker MRX , from whom Benjamin learns three principles: 1. No system is secure , 2. Strive for the impossible and 3. Don't limit your fun to the virtual world .

As a pizza delivery boy, Benjamin meets Marie again, with whom he fell in love during school and who is now studying law. She casually mentions that she might need the exam questions from the university's servers. Benjamin sneaks into the server room and hacks into the university computer, but he is caught and sentenced to social work. He meets the charismatic Max, who is eager to work together when he learns of Benjamin's programming skills. At a party, Max introduces Benjamin to his two friends, Stephan and Paul, who invite him to put his skills to the test. So Benjamin hacked into the city's power supply and switched off the electricity on the whole street for a short time.

Shortly afterwards, Benjamin's grandmother, who has dementia, has to go to a retirement home, which means that her house serves as the headquarters of the four-man hacker group from now on. When looking for a name for the group, Benjamin brought up the suggestion CLAY , which met with general approval. It stands for clowns laughing at you and is based on the masking that is widespread in the hacker sector . Driven by Max's search for recognition by MRX , the group is increasingly launching attacks with socially critical motives in complex companies and organizations - including the right-wing extremist party NBD and a large pharmaceutical company CLAY . Despite great media and social media attention , the hoped-for admiration from MRX does not materialize, and it even turns it into a target of cyber ridicule. The angry Max calls for an attack that exceeds its previous limits many times over, whereupon Benjamin suggests the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) , which is considered unassailable, as the next victim. Thanks to the division of labor between the group, the action succeeds perfectly, but Benjamin steals strictly confidential data in addition to his actual assignment.

When Max kisses Marie at the subsequent party, the jealous Benjamin turns away from him in anger. Without the knowledge of the others, he hands over the stolen data to MRX in the Darknet . One day later, the hacker Krypton , a member of the Russian cyber mafia hacker group FR13NDS , was found murdered in the forest. It turns out that Krypton was a mole of the BND and that his identity was included in the stolen data. Apparently, MRX sold the information to the FR13NDS . The BND investigators attribute the murder to CLAY's hacker attack and turn on the Danish Europol investigator Hanne Lindberg, who has been trying to stop the FR13NDS for three years . In order to take CLAY out of the public eye again, Benjamin only sees the possibility of handing the MRX and the FR13NDS over to the authorities.

During an online session with MRX , the latter finally expressed his appreciation and gave the four of them the task of installing a Trojan at Europol's headquarters . During the meeting, they are located by Lindberg's team of investigators, but can still escape in time. After her renewed failure, Lindberg is suspended and replaced by Martin Bohmer from the BKA . To cover their tracks, the four set Benjamin's grandmother's house on fire. In The Hague , despite several attempts, they initially fail to get to Europol headquarters. It was only a trick Benjamin allow him entry and he can a malicious WLAN - access point accommodate in the canteen with which they get remote access to the Europol server. Using a specially designed Trojan, which is hidden in the MRX Trojan , they want to gain access to MRX's computer and thus to its identity. But MRX saw through their trick and spied Benjamin's location beforehand. Two armed FR13NDS killers chase him into the subway tunnels, where he can escape them. When he returns to their hotel room, he finds Max, Stephan and Paul shot dead.

With this, the story of Benjamin, told in flashbacks, has arrived in the present of the framework plot. Benjamin offers Lindberg to deliver her MRX in return for inclusion in the witness protection program . Despite Bohmer's warning, Lindberg agrees. Benjamin pretends to be MRX in the Darknet and confesses to his betrayal of Krypton . The enraged MRX falls for it and enables Benjamin to trace his trail, so that the wanted hacker can be arrested in New York .

Lindberg, who has now been rehabilitated, now remembers some inconsistencies in Benjamin's story and does some research. She finds the allegedly burned down house intact, the three alleged corpses cannot be found and Marie says that she has not met Benjamin since school. She learns from Benjamin's mother's psychiatrist that Benjamin may have inherited her predisposition to dissociative identity disorder . Therefore she now suspects that Max, Stephan and Paul only existed in Benjamin's imagination and that he is alone CLAY . She confronts him and explains to him that he will not be admitted to the witness protection program if he has a mental disorder. Benjamin fears he will be killed by FR13NDS . Lindberg therefore gives him the opportunity to hack into the software for the witness protection program. There Benjamin assumes a new identity . Lindberg then releases him.

Finally Benjamin is on a ferry in the direction of Copenhagen when Max, Stephan, Paul and Marie appear on deck. Together they are happy to be "invisible" again. The twofold twist is resolved in flashbacks: after Benjamin's escape from the FR13NDS killers, they devised the daring plan to deceive Lindberg in order to give Benjamin the opportunity to manipulate the central register and change their identities. When Paul asked what would happen if Lindberg discovered her trick, Benjamin replied that she already had it, but that she got what she wanted.

production

The filming of the Wiedemann & Berg film production took place from October to December 2013 in Berlin and Rostock.

Allusions and parallels

  • Clay's first action is directed against the right-wing party NBD, an allusion to the NPD . At their party meeting, Clay slips them into a disparaging Hitler commercial, which is shown in front of party members.
  • The main character Tyler Durden in the film Fight Club has a dissociative identity disorder , as does Benjamin apparently. There's a Fight Club movie poster in Benjamin's room showing Tyler Durden.
  • In addition to the real names of the people, their “nicknames” can be found in the employee list of the BND. These come from the DC Comics and Marvel Comics universes (e.g. Krypton).
  • When Benjamin is sitting in the car with Hanne Lindberg shortly before his release, a person can be seen in the background watching what is happening. This led to speculation about a second part. In an interview, Odar revealed: “When he explains the trick to her in the car and puts down the sugar cubes, you can see someone in the background wearing a CLAY mask who really has no business there. With this I want to make it clear: He is and remains schizophrenic and creates characters that are actually not there. "
  • In an interview, Odar confirmed that he staged the role of Hannah Herzsprung in such a way that she never really noticed the boys or looked at them. Odar also admits: “For me, the types don't exist until the end.” However, he leaves the question of the existence of the friends open to the viewer. The question of whether Benjamin's friends are real or imaginary is not answered at the end either.
  • The image “Die Verbotene Reproduktion” ( La reproduction interdite , 1937) by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte appears several times in the film . A copy hangs in the office of the doctor treating Benjamin's grandmother. In the scene after the BND hack, in which the protagonists celebrate their success, the motif reappears. You can see Benjamin from behind in front of a mirror in the toilet. In the mirror, however, you don't see his reflection, but, just like in “The Forbidden Reproduction”, his back.
  • In the credits at the end of the film, the program code of the Back Orifice software is displayed in the background , a remote maintenance software that is generally regarded as a rootkit and thus a tool for hackers.

Publications

After its theatrical release on September 25, 2014, the film reached over 800,000 viewers in Germany. In Russia it had almost 100,000 moviegoers. On April 16, 2015, it was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc .

reception

Who Am I is the first German thriller since the 1980s to take first place in the German cinema charts (most recently Schimanski crime film). The film was proposed as a topic for the subjects German, politics, social studies, ethics, computer science, philosophy and psychology from the 8th grade onwards during the SchulKinoWochen.

Who Am I was also a personal success for director Baran Bo Odar . A little later he received the offer to shoot the movie Sleepless Night with Jamie Foxx and Michelle Monaghan in Hollywood . The Warner Bros film studio plans to produce an American remake of Who Am I.

Reviews

“Fast, smart, funny. Tom Schilling and Elyas M'Barek at their best. As sovereign as the hacker thriller Who Am I - No system is safe , German cinema has not been around the corner for a long time. "

- Spiegel Online

" Who Am I - No system is safe , despite some weaknesses, is a lively thriller that is well worth seeing, especially in the second half of the film."

- Filmstarts.de

Award

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Release certificate for Who Am I - No system is secure . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , November 2014 (PDF; test number: 146 900 V).
  2. ↑ Age rating for Who Am I - No system is safe . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ Berlin has its cybercrime thriller , Zeit Online, September 24, 2014
  4. ↑ TIFF Adds 'Clouds of Sils Maria' and 'Two Days, One Night,' Reveals 5 More Lineups . In: Indiewire . Retrieved August 28, 2014.
  5. ↑ Who Am I - No system is safe. In: Blickpunkt: Film . Retrieved July 18, 2018 .
  6. ↑ a b "Who Am I" - the singing, dancing dregs of the online world , Lisa Ludwig (September 24, 2014), Vice, accessed on July 31, 2018
  7. ↑ Who Am I - No system is safe. In: LUMIERE database for European cinema attendance. Retrieved July 14, 2018 .
  8. ↑ Kinocharts Deutschland: Doppelspitze Sony , Blickpunkt: Film (September 29, 2014), MediaBiz, accessed on April 25, 2015.
  9. ↑ Christian Horn: Who Am I - No system is safe , Vision Kino, film offer of the school cinema weeks, September 1, 2014, accessed on April 25, 2015.
  10. ^ Ines Walk: German Hacker Success - Who am I receives US remake , Moviepilot October 25, 2014, accessed on April 25, 2015.
  11. ^ Critique by Hannah Pilarczyk on Spiegel Online , accessed on September 29, 2014.
  12. ^ Criticism by the Filmstarts editorial team on Filmstarts.de , accessed on September 26, 2014.
  13. ^ German camera award for Nikolaus Summerer. German Camera Prize, accessed on July 14, 2018 .
  14. ↑ Film info: Who Am I - No system is safe. German films , accessed on July 18, 2018 .