Boardroom bombshell
Pia Strietmann, director of Herrhausen – The Banker & the Bomb, tells DQ how she found a modern film language for this German-language drama and identifies a key scene that “holds the soul of the series.”
A four-part Cold War thriller based on a true story, Herrhausen – The Banker & the Bomb dramatises the assassination of visionary German banker Alfred Herrhausen.
Starring Oliver Masucci in the title role, the miniseries charts Deutsche Bank CEO Herrhausen’s bid to provide debt relief to the world’s poorest countries and broker a government-backed billion-dollar loan to the nearly bankrupt Soviet Union – a move that would open up new markets with NATO’s biggest enemy. But with a growing number of enemies and a target on his back, the clock is ticking towards the banker’s downfall.
The ARD series is produced by Sperl Film- und Fernsehproduktion in cooperation with X-Filme Creative Pool, along with Beside Tax Shelter + Productions, Avriofilms and the EKOME Fund. Fremantle is the international distributor.
Here, director Pia Strietmann discusses how she sought to find a modern film language for the series, the show’s unusual protagonist and how a scene in episode three came to hold the “soul” of the series…
“The truth is bearable”
Those words are engraved on the memorial for Alfred Herrhausen. Standing on the spot where he was killed, I understood the weight of what we were about to tell. This wasn’t fiction or a safe reconstruction. It was the story of a man, a country, and a political rupture that still vibrates today.
If the truth is bearable, it must be bearable on screen: unsmoothed, unpolished and unafraid. That tension sits at the heart of Herrhausen: the meeting point of researched history and cinematic interpretation.
A protagonist who doesn’t behave like one
Herrhausen’s story ends in tragedy in 1989 – a fact that shadows the entire narrative. Classical suspense was never an option. Very early on, writer Thomas Wendrich and I realised we were approaching the material from two different but deeply complementary angles. Thomas anchored the political and historical landscape with precision and a refusal to simplify. My instinct moved toward the inner life of the man – his tempo, pressure and contradictions. That friction between external fact and internal truth shaped the tone of the series: we were not reconstructing a life; we were exploring a mind.
Herrhausen’s own line, “There isn’t enough time for them,” became our formal compass. The storytelling needed to feel slightly too fast, restless, always leaning forward. We didn’t want the viewer to follow by explanation but by intuition.
Oliver Masucci steps inside the man
Casting Oliver Masucci was decisive. We never aimed for imitation; we wanted someone who could make Herrhausen legible without softening him. Oliver brought sharpness, charisma and a restless intelligence that made the character contemporary.
Our process was physical and exploratory. Thomas’s writing leaves space between lines, and Oliver used that space as psychological terrain. He doesn’t mimic; he inhabits. Much of this freedom was protected by producer Gabriela Sperl, who consistently defended ambiguity over simplification and safeguarded the creative risks required to portray a complex man in a complex moment.
Camera and editing: real 1980s, modern cinematic thought
Visually, the series builds on my long collaboration with cinematographer Florian Emmerich. We set ourselves a clear challenge: the visual world had to sit firmly in late-1980s reality – the colours, the textures, the physicality – while the camera language remained unmistakably modern.
We wanted the world to look historically accurate yet move with a contemporary pulse. Our visual vocabulary mirrors Herrhausen’s mental acceleration: a camera that leans forward, drifts, loses him, catches him again. It was never meant to observe passively; it needed to embody his interior restlessness.
In editing, this translated into associative rhythm – thoughts colliding, images responding before they explain themselves. Present and memory, logic and fear blend into one another. It was our way of giving cinematic form to a mind that never switched off.
Production design: spaces that think
The same principle shaped the boardroom. Although rooted in late-1980s references, we designed it so that Herrhausen would retain a distinct presence even at a round table with 12 identical chairs. A precisely placed triangular axis behind his seat created a subtle hierarchy: depending on the camera position, it strengthened his authority or diminished it when we shifted him off-centre. The room became a narrative tool rather than a backdrop.
The desk scene: where everything converges (episode three)
One scene in episode three holds the soul of the entire series. It is late at night. Herrhausen sits at his desk. Pressure mounts. Allies drift. The board resists him. He tries to write a letter to Kopper – a final attempt to pull an old ally back. But the words won’t follow him. His thoughts slide toward the global questions that have always consumed him: debt, inequality, responsibility, the blind spots of the West.
What begins as a letter becomes an inner manifesto. A man who has always thought faster than the world around him suddenly cannot keep pace with his own acceleration. The security guard enters, reminding him to lock the doors. Oliver plays the moment with irritation edged by fear. Why shouldn’t his wife go to the cinema? Why must freedom suddenly be negotiated?
From here, the scene drifts into a fever dream. A raven appears – symbolic, surreal and rooted in the pressure crushing him. And then it breaks: Herrhausen falls down the stairs. Not theatrically, not dramatically, but the way a body gives out when the mind can no longer carry its own momentum.
What made this moment work was the alignment across departments. The props team dressed the room with objects that invited emotional discovery rather than choreography. Camera, writing and performance moved on the same internal frequency. These moments are rare – when a sequence becomes more than the sum of its parts. We shot the entire sequence at the end of our first week, almost in one run. When we wrapped, it was clear Oliver wasn’t simply portraying Herrhausen – he had stepped into him.
A global world on limited means
The series needed a global reach, but we had to be strategic. Many locations – Moscow, Copenhagen, Washington, New York – were recreated in Belgium; Beirut and Damascus in Greece; Frankfurt and Bad Homburg at the original sites; and late-1980s German settings across North Rhine-Westphalia filled the rest. The rapid shifts between these worlds reflect Herrhausen’s own pace, but speed only matters when you also know how to slow down.
Why this scene matters
In this feverish moment, the central question of the series becomes clear: what happens to a man when his vision outpaces the world around him? The desk scene condenses his brilliance, exhaustion, political burden and emotional isolation into a single point. It is the moment where biography becomes cinema.
In the end
When I think of Herrhausen – The Banker & the Bomb, I think of that man at his desk – brilliant, exhausted, accelerated, alone. Everything we hoped to express lives in that moment: urgency, humanity, refusal to simplify and the belief that emotional truth can honour historical fact.
If a biopic succeeds, it should feel alive, immediate, and unsettlingly close. The truth is bearable. The question is whether we dare to look closely enough.
Like that? Watch this! Suggested by AI, selected by DQ
Deutschland 83: An East German spy is drawn into a labyrinth of shifting alliances, secret operations and personal peril during a momentous turning point in European history.
Devils: An Italian trading prodigy and his mentor are caught up in an international conspiracy as financial warfare threatens the stability of the global economy.
Follow the Money: A Danish eco-crime thriller that investigates the dark intersections between renewable energy, corporate greed and global financial crime.
RELATED CONTENT
What happened to Herrhausen?
German political drama Herrhausen – The Banker & The Bomb shines a light on the assassination of a prominent banker just weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Producer Gabriele Sperl, writer Thomas Wendrich and star Oliver Masucci tell DQ how they brought this true story to the screen.
Matter of tax
Other People’s Money showrunner Jan Schomburg and star Nils Strunk reflect on the task of dramatising events surrounding the largest tax fraud in European history for this eight-part drama that blends ‘Shakespearean’ characters with elements of screwball comedies.
Building Babylon
Babylon Berlin recreates 1920s Berlin in exquisite detail to bring Volker Kutchser’s detective Gereon Rath to television. DQ visits the set.
tagged in: ARD, Avriofilms, Beside Tax Shelter + Productions, EKOME Fund, Fremantle, Herrhausen – The Banker & The Bomb, Pia Strietmann, Sperl Film- und Fernsehproduktion, X Filme Creative Pool