Die Pfeiler der Macht (2016)

The London banking house of Pilaster enjoys the highest reputation in nineteenth-century Victorian England. Seth Pilaster (Rolf Hoppe) heads the family-run business with his sons Samuel (Axel Milberg) and Joseph (Thorsten Merten). Although the three present an image of a smoothly functioning firm to the outside world, family life is marked by conflict. Hugh (Dominic Thorburn), the youngest member, is especially unable to fit into the family circle. Ever since his father took his own life after his textile company went bankrupt during the economic crisis of 1866, Hugh has lived under the care of his uncle Joseph and Joseph’s power-hungry wife, Augusta (Jeanette Hain). Hugh is talented and hardworking, but these qualities do him no good, since Joseph favors his own son, Edward (Daniel Sträßer), who is expected to take over the family business one day. To cope with his sense of isolation, Hugh spends time in the pubs of London’s poor district, where he meets Maisie (Laura de Boer), who supports herself and her terminally ill daughter by stealing. But seeing no promising prospects either for his career or for his relationship with Maisie, he leaves for America. Six years later, around 1880, he returns to London as a respected banker, accompanied by his wife Nora (Yvonne Catterfeld), an emancipated singer. By then, Maisie is married to Hugh’s best friend, Solly Greenbourne (Albrecht Abraham Schuch), a Jewish banker’s son and dreamer. Her young son is Hugh’s own. Hugh offers the Pilaster banking house a merger with American partners. But by then, the South American libertine Mickey Miranda is calling the shots there: he has both junior executive Edward and Edward’s mother Augusta firmly under his control, and even seduces Edward’s devout wife, Florence (Gloria Endres de Oliveira). Mickey plans to procure money and weapons for his father to stage a political coup in his father’s homeland.