Margin Call

This thriller set in New York’s Wall Street at the time of the international financial crisis of 2008 takes place in the offices of a major investment bank during the decisive twenty-four hours that precede their bankruptcy announcement. Having examined the books, young analyst Peter Sullivan suddenly realises that the valuations on which the company has based its business are faulty and that assets from the firm’s mortgage business do not have the same value recorded in the accounts, on the contrary – they have brought the firm to the brink of collapse. No sooner do they hear about the situation that night than the firm’s top management convene a meeting to try to save the bank. Among those at the meeting is Sam Rogers, an experienced stockbroker, his boss Jared Cohen and risk analyst Sarah Robertson. The company head, John Tuld, is also flown in to the meeting by helicopter and it is he who ultimately comes up with a plan to bail them out: as soon as the stock exchange opens in the morning they are to offload all ‘toxic’ debts – a move that will have drastic consequences, not just for Wall Street.

JC Chandor: “The American independent investment bank as we knew it died. Margin Call is my attempt to share the experiences of a small group of characters that were sitting at the heart of this crisis without even realizing it. The machinery they were a part of had grown so large and complex that no one could comprehend its destructive power until it was too late.” –Berlinale