Thomas Piketty’s landmark bestseller Capital in the 21st Century has sold millions of copies around the world. Its potential audience is about to explode again, thanks to this accessibly entertaining and enlightening film adaptation. 

Not content with directing New Zealand’s highest-grossing documentary (2016’s Chasing Great), award-winning filmmaker Justin Pemberton aims even bigger with this adaptation of Piketty’s “magnificent”, “groundbreaking” “masterpiece” of economic theory! Piketty’s timely thesis about wealth, power and inequality is especially relevant for a generation considered the first to be financially worse off than their parents.

Offering a rousing and informative study of contemporary capitalism, Pemberton’s film features analysis from Piketty as well as equally esteemed economic thinkers including The End of History author Francis Fukuyama, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, award-winning finance journalist Gillian Tett and more. Significantly, it weaves their commentary into a dynamic, pop-culture-infused rallying cry – scored by Air’s Jean-Benoît Dunckel – which persuasively argues that what’s good for Wall Street is pretty terrible for the rest of us.