THE EXPERIMENT (DAS EXPERIMENT) International Competition

Based on the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971, THE EXPERIMENT has already garnered numerous awards including Best Director at the 2001 Montreal World Film Festival and the Bavarian Film Awards, as well as the Audience Award for Best Film at the German Film Awards.

Twenty men sign up for a handsomely paid psychological study wherein they will become members of a mock prison for 14 days. A computer arbitrarily assigns them their roles-eight guards and 12 prisoners. Among them is Tarek Fahd, a journalist secretly collecting data for a front page report that instantly becomes the first crease in the experiment’s fabric. “This is just a game,” he repeatedly utters. But the “game” soon spirals out of control to violent, tragic results.

The debut film of renowned television director Oliver Hirschbiegel, THE EXPERIMENT is a stunning, suspenseful journey into the darkest realms of the human psyche.