Reclaim your brain

Successful TV producer Rainer has it all: big salary, luxurious penthouse, high life, hot car, even hotter girlfriend. The 30-something go-getter has reached the top by creating TV shows of the most stupid and vulgar kind. In his latest hit, a man gets the privilege of fathering a woman's child if his spermatozoid wins a microscopic race to fertilize an ovum! One day, mysterious young woman Pegah vengefully drives full speed into Rainer's car. After this near-death experience, Rainer has a major change of heart and decides to produce a thought-provoking news show for his station's prime-time lineup. Devastated by the show's poor ratings, Rainer quits his job and embarks on an investigation of the audience measurement system that keeps intelligence-insulting programs at Number One. Teaming up with the beautiful Pegah and a gang of unemployed social misfits, Rainer sets out to prove that a conspiracy surrounds the boxes used in select households to estimate audience percentage. Determined to fight television's dumbing down of society, Rainer and his new friends eventually go all the way with an intricate and ingenious plan to get the public interested in quality cultural programs. But the station execs who live off audience hunger for brainless TV are not willing to give up what they have ruthlessly built over the years ...

Hans Weingartner strives for democracy as well as humour and positive thinking in his filmmaking. His popular second feature, »The Edukators«, was a 2004 Cannes competition entry and was later named Best First Feature by the German Film Critics Association. Weingartner's acclaimed 2001 debut, »The White Sound«, won the prestigious Max Ophüls Prize and was named Best First Feature by the German Film Critics, as well as winning numerous awards for actor Daniel Brühl in the leading role as a young schizophrenic. Austrian-born Weingartner studied neuroscience at the University of Vienna and graduated from the neurosurgical department at the University of Berlin's Steglitz Clinic. During his studies (1991- 97), Weingartner also began working as a camera assistant. He did his post-graduate studies (1997-2001) in filmmaking at Cologne's Academy of Media Arts (KHM).

Filmography:

2007 »Reclaim Your Brain« (Free Rainer)
2004 »The Edukators« (Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei)
2001 »The White Sound« (Das weisse Rauschen)