Talking Money deals with encounters at a particular location: a desk, ruled by power and powerlessness, that transforms us as soon as we sit down.
Can the language of money be captured? Documentary film is capable of discovering new narrative spaces that were inaccessible until now. The intimate conversations about money at the bank sketch a spectrum of social images that revolve around questions of participation and exclusion, trust and control. Surprisingly, both sides accept the rules of the system as a given. As customers, we seem to be in the same boat all across the world. None of us can presume to step outside the lines.
I am grateful to all of the protagonists for having the courage and the trust to support us. In that regard, the banks were the more difficult candidates by far: just eight of them gave us permission to film – in some cases, after several years.For that matter, I am convinced that it is easier to rob a bank than to film in one.
To me, cinema is a collective dream in which the screen just disappears and we enter into relationship with people, along with all our experiences and thoughts, each of us in an individual way. I hope that people in the cinema will sense that first and foremost, my films have something do with them personally.