page_title: The Edukators
section_title: Development and characters
hierarchical_section_title: The Edukators / Production / Development and characters
caption_attribution_description: English: Director Hans Weingartner. Portrait (c) by Stefan Klüter.
context_page_description: The Edukators is a 2004 crime drama film directed by Austrian director Hans Weingartner. A co-production between German and Austria, it stars Daniel Brühl, Stipe Erceg and Julia Jentsch as three young, anti-capitalist Berlin activists involved in a love triangle. The friends, calling themselves "the Edukators", invade upper-class houses, rearrange the furniture, and leave notes identifying themselves. Weingartner, a former activist, wrote the film based on his experiences and chose to use nonviolent characters. The film, shot in Berlin and Austria with digital hand-held cameras, was made on a low budget which Weingartner said kept the focus on the acting.
  First shown at the Cannes Film Festival on 17 May 2004 and released in its home countries later that year, The Edukators was praised by critics and audiences. It grossed more than $8 million worldwide and received a number of awards and nominations. It did, however, receive criticism mainly for its political statements and also for its long running time. Nonetheless, it has become a cult film part of a "German New Wave", and it has inspired real-life actions and a 2013 stage adaptation in Brazil.
context_section_description: According to Weingartner, The Edukators was influenced by his past as a political activist: "There's some of me in the film". He considers it an autobiographical film, with Brühl playing Weingartner. It describes the last 10 years of his life, an attempt to find a political movement satisfying his ideals. It also reflects his frustration over the lack of political ideals among his generation and the effect of advertising and media images. About this, he stated, "We don't know where to put our revolutionary energy and we don't know how to fight the system because we can't grab it, we don't know how to attack it," he said. "The system has become so invulnerable because it sells revolution to us."
  The director opted for nonviolence because violence "only makes the system stronger", citing the Baader-Meinhof gang which "practically killed the Left movement in Germany ... because they gave the police an excuse to really arm up and create a more totalitarian system." Instead, Weingartner gave his characters "poetic resistance."
  Although Brühl thought the film "very realistic", he was dissatisfied with his character's authenticity. The actor felt "attached" to Jan, admiring his "courage to want to change the way things are going, to act to defend his beliefs", but thought it was "very utopian and naive, that they take so much risk to break into some rich man's house to move things around."
  The authenticity of the love triangle was "very important" to Weingartner, who was once part of such a relationship. Although the actors were uncertain at first that Peter could forgive Jan and Jule's betrayal, Weingartner uses the situation to explore his concept of friendship: "Friendship means more to him than bourgeois moral values. Peter loves Jule – he doesn't own her. He can tell that when she falls in love with Jan, their love is a wonderful thing, coloured by a joint rebellion – a shared rejection of social constraint."
caption: Director Hans Weingartner based the film on his past as a political activist.
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