Bank Job (PG)
Directed by Dan Edelstyn and Hilary Powell

HUSBAND-AND-WIFE film-making team Dan Edelstyn and Hilary Powell take a fun and irreverent look at the dark world of debt by launching their own currency and blowing up a million pounds-worth of high interest debt in this riveting, screwball documentary.

Not to be confused with Jason Statham’s The Bank Job, this film takes its inspiration from Michael Caine’s The Italian Job as it humorously shows how the banks and creditors don’t want people to pay off what they owe because, as one expert explains, “if you pay off your debt entirely you’re no longer a source of profit to creditors.”

The film chronicles how the couple teamed up with their local community in Walthamstow in London to help raise £40,000 to purchase just over a million pounds in debt and then completely write it off.

Edelstyn speaks to financial experts, debt campaign groups and debt collectors in the US and in Britain to understand the extent of the problem and how to go about cancelling it.

The idea was to print artistic fake notes, featuring the faces of inspirational members of the community such as the founders of the local food bank and soup kitchen and to sell them for real money.

With the help of local residents, the film-makers set up their bank in the former premises of the Co-op Bank and embarked on cleaning up debt. They donated half of the cash to four local groups who helped them and the rest was used to pay off the money owed by local people who they wrote to individually to explain what they had done.

The most enjoyable documentary I have seen about toxic debt, this is a compelling film and the easiest to comprehend. It ends on a symbolic blowing-up of a gold transit van full of debts, sending a clear and unequivocal message to the powers that be.

In cinemas on May 28.