As a lowly bank employee, what do you do when you discover a security vulnerability in the bank's financial transaction system? You pinch 2.5 million German marks and disappear to Australia. That's what supposedly happened in the summer of 1988 – and now onscreen in this as entertaining as raucous melange of documentary, animation and feature film.

A rocker in the banking world of the 1980s will always be a fish out of water. But if you discover a security vulnerability in the bank's financial transaction system, you can quickly unburden your employer of 2.5 million German marks and disappear to Australia, where your life of luxury can begin! But what this clever bank robber hadn't expected is that his girlfriend doesn't want to follow him Down Under – where he now sits in his gilded cage, his yearning for his young son growing and growing. A grey-haired man on the banks of the Elbe River in Hamburg, looking directly into the camera: what starts out as a reminiscing documentary narrative – or is it just sailor's yarn? – evolves into an as entertaining as raucous melange of documentary, animation and feature film, told in flashback and embellished with a mass of retro charm. The appalling beige-brown savings bank world meets rocker romanticism and the longing for the big wide world as seen on the photo wallpaper of a sunset on a palm-lined beach.

Reviews and Commentary:

"The narrative style is what's special here; in voiceover and with the greatest possible Hanseatic laconicism, the perpetrator of the time tells his of coup, with a miniscule gap of irony ever-present between his memories and the events recreated on the screen." (Hanns-Georg Rodek, Die Welt, 4.11.2019)

"How does one tell a 'true story'? In his film Coup, Sven O. Hill plays with the boundaries between fiction and documentary film, as well as with the opportunities that arise through their obfuscations. It is the tale of a young bank employee who exploited a security vulnerability in financial transactions in Hamburg in 1988 and absconded, together with a buddy and 2.5 stolen German marks, to Australia – where extradition was not allowed. The unnamed perpetrator tells his life story directly into the camera – and he is a good storyteller. He begins, for example, by telling how he brought home a broken lawnmower as a child, which his father then repaired. Makes sense, then, that he should later become a motorcyclist and rocker, right? And so he also had to remain an outsider in his working world at the bank, a job that increasingly bored him. At times the narrative is illustrated with minimalistic animations, but above all it uses re-enacted scenes in which Daniel Michel plays the protagonist (and Rocko Schamoni a greasy lawyer in Australia). To establish the Australian scenes, all that is needed are few archival pictures of palm beaches and the Sydney Opera House – as well as exterior shots on a golf course, for it looks the same here as there. Hill avoids any halfway authentic-looking realism, and the film is permeated by the charm of a specious B-movie. Foregoing the use of a screenplay with set dialogue, the actors improvised cheerfully all along the way. You can't always understand them, but you don't miss anything decisive: as it is, the perpetrator tells a much more charming story in voiceover. This artifice can be understood as a distantiation in the tradition of Brecht – and Brecht's oft-quoted phrase that robbing a bank is harmless when compared to the bank's founding. It also fits to this entertaining and subversive film." (Wilfried Hippen, taz, 24.10.2019)

Beate Schierle in conversation with Tomasz Robak, actor in Coup, Homeland and at Theater Konstanz, in Südkurier vom 15.02.2020:

Schierle: And how was it with Coup, your new film, which hits the cinemas in October?

Robak: The director wrote to me directly because he had seen a video that was on the homepage of the drama school. The film is about an absurd case that actually happened in Hamburg at the end of the 1980s. A 22-year-old bank employee, who was also a member of a motorcycle club, decided to clean out a bank. He finds a security vulnerability and gets hold of a million dollars. I play the accomplice of the bank employee (Daniel Michel); we play the two main roles. What's fascinating about this film are the different narrative forms. It's a fusion of documentary, animation and feature film. For which it won the New German Cinema Award at the Hof International Film Festival. In the south, it's already been screened at the film festival in Biberach where, surprisingly, we were awarded by the student jury. Surprising because I didn't expect the humour of our film to reach that age group. (…)

Who was the director?

Sven O. Hill. Previously, he had made two documentaries. Coup is his directorial debut. The film was made with a virtually non-existent budget. We had relatively little money at our disposal. In mere hours, Homeland consumed the same. The film funding support, and which projects get financed how, is another topic.

Frederik Lang (03.08.2020)

Production Country

Germany (DE)

Production Period

2015-2019

Production Year

2019

color

color

Aspect Ratio

1:1,85

Duration

Feature-Length Film (61+ Min.)

Type

Feature Film, Documentary, Experimental Film, Animated Film

Genre

Biography / Portrait, Comedy

Topic

Relationship / Family, Work, Psychology

Available Media

DCP, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Digital Film

Original Version

German (de)

DCP

Subtitles

German (partly), German (full), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (short), Russian (ru), Arabic (ar)

Blu-ray Disc

Subtitles

German (partly), German (full), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (short), Russian (ru), Arabic (ar)

DVD

Subtitles

German (partly), German (full), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (short), Russian (ru), Arabic (ar)

Digital Film

Subtitles

English (en), Russian (ru), French (fr), Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (short), Arabic (ar), Spanish (Latin America), German (full)