Currently in production! Click here to watch the trailer.
Yellow vests in France, UK Brexiters, Italy’s Five Star movement, all united in their protest against taxes and social inequalities. Why is tax such an explosive issue? Our film looks for the answer back in time, at the turn of WWI when modern tax was invented as a means of financing war. It was the beginning of the political and social history of the universal, progressive income tax in these countries.
TREATMENT:
WWI led Germany, France and the UK to set up redistributive taxation to finance their armies and create a “social” bond between their citizens. This new income tax helped build their modern welfare states (Eps 1) until a new ideology swapped solidarity for productivity (Eps 2). The film ends as new health imperatives force governments to reconsider the role and place of a fair fiscal system for a post-pandemic world.
Filmed in France, Germany & UK. Apart from historical archives, the story relies on a wide array of “involved characters” from all walks of life (activists, workers, tax experts, politicians, entrepreneurs, etc), framed by beautiful areal shooting for geographical context.

Estimated completion: Nov. 2021