Other People's Money

Jan Schomburg's Other People's Money opened in the Berlinale Panorama strand in February 2025 and went out across Europe in April 2025 on ZDF in Germany, DR in Denmark and ORF in Austria, Schomburg's first long-form television commission, after a film career that includes Above Us Only Sky (2011) and the Wim Wenders co-write Every Thing Will Be Fine (2015). The eight-episode series is produced by X Filme Creative Pool (Germany), True Content Entertainment (Denmark) and EPO-Film (Austria), with Beta Film handling international distribution. The screenplay is loosely based on Oliver Schröm's 2022 book Die Cum-Ex-Files and Niels Fastrup & Thomas G. Svaneborg's Det Store Skatterøveri, both definitive accounts of the Cum-Ex tax-fraud network that drained an estimated €146 billion from European tax authorities through the 2000s and 2010s.

The cast is led by Justus von Dohnányi (Downfall) as Dr. Bernd Hausner, the lawyer-architect of the trade, and Nils Strunk as Sven Lebert, his junior protégé. David Dencik (Top of the Lake, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) plays Danish tax investigator Niels Jensen, with Karen-Lise Mynster, Lars Brygmann, Lisa Wagner and Anne Ratte-Polle in major supporting roles. Direction is shared between Adolfo Kolmerer and Schomburg himself; cinematography is by Mark Schlatter. The series operates simultaneously in German and Danish, a deliberate choice that mirrors the cross-border architecture of the trade itself.

European critical reception was strong, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Cineuropa and Süddeutsche Zeitung all placed it among the standout German-language commissions of the year, with particular praise for Schomburg's refusal to soften the financial detail into TV-drama shorthand. The series is part of a broader cultural reckoning with the Cum-Ex case in Germany, where prosecutions are still active.