Director Michael Winterbottom is set to return to the documentary genre later this month with his latest film The Emperor's New Clothes.
The Emperor's New Clothes
We have just seen Winterbottom enjoy success with The Face of an Angel, but now he is exploring the financial crisis and the ever widening gulf between the rich and the poor.
Russell Brand has been a very loud political voice in recent years, and he takes centre stage in this film and in the brand new poster for the movie.
Brand is on the hunt for some of the richest bankers in the UK as the movie mixes interviews, archive footage and comedy to highlight the problems facing our country at the moment.
The Emperor's New Clothes marks the first time that Winterbottom and Brand have collaborated on a film project, and this is the first documentary for the director since The Shock Doctrine back in 2010.
Russell Brand joins forces with acclaimed director Michael Winterbottom on a polemical documentary about the financial crisis and gross inequality we currently face. Starting with the genesis of today's economic policies, with the arrival of Milton Friedman's school of thought in Reagan's leadership and Thatcher's UK, the film explores how these policies have come to dominate the western world.
The rich have got richer; where a CEO of a major British company used to earn 10 times the average wage of his workers, now they earn 200 times. According to Oxfam, the richest 80 people in the world own as much as the poorest 3.5 billion. It would now take 300 years for the average cleaner, cleaning the offices of his senior boss, to earn the same salary taken home by the same boss last year.
Milton Friedman once said that every crisis was an opportunity. The financial crisis of 2008 should have been a chance to reform the system for the benefit of everyone. But instead, austerity for everyone throughout Britain and Europe was the price to be paid for supporting the financial sector, with £131 billion spent by UK tax payers to keep the financial system afloat, while $30 trillion in support and subsidies went to Wall Street in the US.
This daring film will shake up the world by revealing the bewildering truth about how the people at the bottom are paying for the luxuries of those at the top.