Capital in the 21st Century

I wanted to present a long view, a wide shot of capital that spans 400 years – ending in the near future – and was keen to create the feeling of hovering above the world watching events play out ... I was keen too for a film that embraced a vivid pop-cultural history, since tales of wealth and financial struggle have been core themes in popular stories for centuries.

– Writer/director Justin Pemberton

Capital in the 21st Century shows that us that things can change. Political apathy often comes from a feeling of hopelessness born of a belief that ‘things have always been this way’. An easy thing to imagine if you’re just looking across your own lifetime, but if we expand our time horizons then we see how dramatically the world has changed, and we know it will again.

– Writer/director Justin Pemberton

I love movies ... I thought this was a wonderful way to reach a broader and different audience, and most importantly to use a different language to talk about capital in the 21st century. I believe in the language of the social sciences, but I also believe that it is insufficient, and that it needs to be complemented with the language of novels, cartoons, popular culture, art.

– Thomas Piketty, economist and author of 2013 book Capital in the 21st Century

A nimble and eye-opening documentary that puts you in the revelatory position of looking back over the last 300 years — where we’ve been and where we’re going — from a God’s-eye economic view.

– Critic Owen Gleiberman, in a Variety review of Capital in the 21st Century, 2 May 2020