Optimise yourself!

Film by Reinhild Dettmer-Finke

2017, 57 Min. ZDF/arte, SRF

Self-optimisation technology is booming. A gigantic industry is constantly urging us to measure our bodies with new smartphone apps and developing pills and potions to improve the performance of our brain. The line between the desire to improve ourselves and an obsession with self-optimisation is a fine one. Achieving the “perfect person” appears to be the great project of our times. Where is the dividing line between self-optimisation technologies that improve the quality of our life and those that merely correspond with a social ideology where constantly increasing performance becomes a compulsion? Is the rapidly growing self-improvement trend an opportunity or already an imperative? Will mankind really become healthier, happier and “better” in future, or are we entering a self-optimisation dictatorship? The investigative documentary asks these questions and examines self-optimisation methods already in use and ideas that are being developed for the future. We meet people who have internalised and practice the latest self-optimisation methods in all spheres of life, such as diet, work and parenting, and we meet philosophers, sociologists and other thinkers who analyse and socially classify the trend.

Crew

Director: Reinhild Dettmer-Finke

Camera: Ingo Behring, Axel Schneppat, Marcel Kolvenbach, Ursula Wernly

Editor: Mike Schlömer

Composer: Karl-Heinz Blomann

Production: Anahita Nazemi (Kobalt Documentary)

Commissioning Editor: Kathrin Brinkmann ZDF/arte, Sandra Roth, Yves Bossart SRF

Press comment

Was früher „Gott“ hieß, heißt jetzt „Erfolg“. Die Priester der neuen Religion nennt man „Coach“ oder „Personal Trainer“: Ein Arte-Film über das Gebot der ständigen Verbesserung des Ich.
Frankfurter Rundschau, 8.5.2018

Der Film macht deutlich, wie weit die Ökonomisierung des Lebens schon fortgeschritten ist.
Badische Zeitung, 24.4.2018