THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD

In December 2004, BBC viewers got a pleasant surprise: a man identifying himself as the spokesperson of the chemical corporation DOW took full responsibility for the horrible disaster that took place in Bhopal two decades earlier, in which 18,000 Indian citizens died as a result of a Poisoned gas leak. On another occasion, they mock the folks at Exxon by proposing organic oil produced from the victims of climate change. It didn’t take too much time to understand that these were further operations of the Yes Men, a two-man underground team whose aim to ridicule the evils of capitalism, the threats of globalization, and government support for corporate greed.

We first met the Yes Men at JFF 2004 as they duped the IMF or George Bush and his people. Here, in that same screwball spirit, Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum appear in a new film, which they also write and direct (with the help of Kurt Engfehr). As in the screening of Yes Men five years ago, we are bound to laugh out loud at the sight of the pair’s unrelenting attempts to fix the world and to put to shame the representatives of the multinational corporations. Enthusiastic viewers at the Berlinale gave the film the Audience Award in the Panorama section.