De Achtste Dag

The financial crisis of 2008 was a turning point during which the complexity of our financial system manifested itself. It was a web we had spun for over for more than thirty years, and which had brought us prosperity, larger houses and widescreen-televisions. But it turned out to be a giant house of cards. Starting in the US where the Lehman Brothers fell, the crisis spread like wildfire. Only two weeks after Lehman, the crisis infected Europe. 'On Day Eight' is a film about those seven days in 2008, during which all European countries had to work together, despite their differences. Suddenly, every second counted, the next morning, the stock-exchange would open again. Trust became more valuable than money. And unorthodox methods had to be used to save one of Europe's largest banks, FORTIS/ABN-Amro, which was twice the size of Lehman and had the potential of triggering the widely-feared domino-effect of falling banks all over the rest of the European continent and the British isles. Those who held all the power and control now take us back into this almost disastrous week in a harrowing hour-to-hour reconstruction.