BORN TO FAKE - Die Geschichte des Fälschers Michael Born
60 min, Documentary, in Pre-Production
In 1996, one of the biggest media scandals to date shook Germany: Michael Born, a self-made journalist, had faked over twenty reports for the newly emerged private television between 1990 and 1996. Partly amateurish, partly with absurd topics: Child labor for Ikea in India, drug addicts licking toads to get high and the Ku Klux Klan in the Eiffel are just a few of the many fakes.
How could it come so far? Was Michael Born an enlightener who subversively exposed the tabloid system or was he simply a faker? A search for clues about Born and what he left to the world, cut from hundreds of hours of his raw material, as well as from stories of former companions. And with fakes that have not yet been unmasked.
A media-theoretical film about levels of reality, authenticity strategies and the question of why we believe what we see.
„Fake News have been made by generations before me. One thing is certain: we were the last real craftsmen."
– Michael Born
Director: Erec Brehmer, Benjamin Rost
Editor: Clifford Palmer
Production: Mark Szilágyi
60 min, Series, MFG Filmförderung, SWR, MSZ Filmproduction and Consulting, TELLUX-Film GmbH