Autentic Nabs World Rights to ‘Game Over’
Munich-based Autentic has acquired the international rights to the award-winning Swiss docuseries Game Over – The Fall of Credit Suisse, Simon Helbling’s chronicle of the dramatic collapse of the once-mighty Swiss bank in 2023 and its takeover by rival UBS.
The four-part series, written and directed by Helbling and co-written by journalist Arthur Rutishauser, examines the reality behind Credit Suisse’s seemingly illustrious facade: a corporate culture of high risk and greed that continued to accept huge losses as long as the bonuses kept coming in.
The series follows the development of this corporate culture from the 1970s onwards, runs like a thread through the bank’s history and shows how the unexpected end was inevitable.
The investigative docuseries won the award for best documentary at the Giessen International Series Festival, while the feature film version became the most successful documentary in Swiss cinemas in 2025.
Key players in the series include current UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti, UBS Chairman Colm Kelleher, former Credit Suisse CEO and Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann and Swiss Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter, as well as other prominent figures from the international financial sector.
“Game Over – The Fall of Credit Suisse” is produced by Zurich-based Contrast Film and Swiss media group Tamedia, in co-production with Swiss Studios and Kinescope Filmproduktion.
Producers include Ivan Madeo and Anke Beining-Wellhausen of Contrast Film, Stefan Halter of Tamedia, Malte Probst of Swiss Studios and Matthias Greving of Kinscope.
“This high-stakes financial thriller that appeals to audiences far beyond Switzerland paints a gripping picture of one of the most spectacular financial scandals in recent history,” said Mirjam Strasser, director of sales and acquisitions at Autentic, a subsidiary of the Beta Film Group.
“Told in a true-crime style, both as a four-part series and as a 90-minute cinematic feature, the documentary chronicles the dramatic downfall and inevitable ‘death’ of the long-standing Swiss banking giant – with exclusive interviews and rare insider accounts. With unprecedented access and universal themes of power, greed and responsibility, we are confident this documentary will captivate a global audience.”
In creating the series, Helbling sought to answer the question: “What is really the truth behind this historic 2023 collapse of Credit Suisse, one of the world’s systemically important banks? It was clear to me that no one could answer this better than the decision makers who were themselves responsible for the decline.”
That was no easy task.
“Bringing them out of their shells was a grueling two-year task, marked by many backroom discussions and threats from lawyers, but it was also an extremely fascinating experience, which I had the opportunity to undertake with investigative journalist Arthur Rutishauser, editor-in-chief of the Swiss newspaper SonntagsZeitung.”
Madeo noted that “Game Over – The Fall of Credit Suisse” is the first documentary series produced under the new Swiss investment commitment program known as Lex Netflix. The law, which came into effect in 2024, requires streaming services and foreign TV channels to invest part of their revenues in Swiss film production.
“This makes it the first high-quality docuseries in Switzerland to be financed mainly by private investors,” Madeo added. “For us at Contrast Film, this was an exciting experiment, not only in terms of content and production, but also financially.”
Contrast Film’s upcoming series ‘Gold’, meanwhile, will be one of 16 projects at this year’s Series Mania Forum’s Co-Pro Pitching Sessions.
The six-part thriller tells the story of a Swiss gold trader who becomes entangled in the darkest corners of the global gold trade. Produced by Stefan Eichenberger and Madeo, “Gold” won the invitation to Series Mania at the Berlinale Co-Pro Series event last month.
