Sky filmed the “Ibiza Affair” researched by SZ as a series – Medien

It starts like an American thriller. A conspiratorial meeting in a hotel room in 2018. Suspicion and extreme tension. Two men scan a journalist and then show him hot goods: a video. On it you can see how the Austrian politician Heinz-Christian Strache, head of the right-wing populist FPÖ, in a small, drunken sofa round from the takeover of the Viennese Kronen Newspaper swaggered by a Russian oligarch. And eloquently paints out how he would then rebuild the press landscape in the autocratic way. A hammer. The journalist immediately recognizes the explosiveness of the material, and the viewer even already knows how the matter will end. This video, the famous video of the “Ibiza Affair”, filmed secretly in a specially rented finca on the Balearic island, will be published in early summer 2019 by the Southgerman newspaper and the mirrors trigger a political quake. As a result, the Austrian government overturns, who knows?

How all of this happened in detail, how the video hit came about and how the researchers at SZ, colleagues Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer, plowed through the material, checked and processed it, that’s what the mini-series tells The Ibiza affair, produced for Sky Studios, in an original, complex way: not linear, not chronological, not sober-factual, but in flashbacks and wild leaps in time between 2013 and 2020, in spy thriller style and intoxicating glossy images, sometimes at a pace like speed, but also with gritty Austrian comedy and a lot of abuse. Everything is not always completely understandable, but everything is absolutely insane.

Nicholas Ofczarek, this creature from an actor, is good to be feared in the role of mastermind

The basis of the facts is the book that Obermaier & Obermayer published about their research (“The Ibiza Affair. Inside Views of a Scandal”). Stefan Holtz and Florian Iwersen then took a lot of fictional freedom for the series plot and created a curious mix of styles and genres of agent thriller and political farce in a creative alliance with director Christopher Schier. The extravaganzas include filmed flashes of thought and inserted explanatory videos like in Michael Moore’s films. For example, the practice of illegal party donations is quickly demonstrated with puppets or there is a tension between them mirrors and SZ in a cartoon.

The focus here is not, however, as it was in the past Incorruptible (about the Watergate affair) the journalists, but the two men who came up with the video trap in Ibiza and the fake oligarch as a decoy. On the one hand, there is the Viennese real estate attorney Ramin Mirfakhrai, a wealthy self-made man with exiled Iranian relatives who is following the rise of the right in Austria with great concern. In the super election year 2015, Strache’s FPÖ came to more than 30 percent. Mirfakhrai, wonderfully signed by David A. Hamade, decides to do something about it, after all he not only has a lot of money, but also incriminating material against Strache in his safe. Material leaked to him by Strache’s driver. But what to do with it? When he met the Viennese private detective Julian Hessenthaler during a business deal, the matter became concrete: They forged the plan to get Strache off the ground. With a video evidence. So everything takes its crazy course.

While the lawyer is actually interested in improving the world, Hessenthaler has motives that you never quite see through. Nicholas Ofczarek, this creature from an actor, is once again good to be frightened in this role, with Plauze and Schnauzer. He is the actual narrator, as such he sometimes addresses the audience directly, like Frank Underwood in House of Cards, only much more powerful in testosterone and in the broadest, most palatable Viennese style. In general, this series is top cast, with actors who resemble their real role models almost to the point, this is especially true for Andreas Lust as a great copy of “HC” Strache, but also for Julian Looman in the role of the party-loving Strache buddy Johann Gudenus. Stefan Murr and Patrick Güldenberg also come very close to the originals in the role of the two SZ reporters, that is assured. The real Bastian Obermayer and the real Frederik Obermaier appear in the documentation that accompanies the series The Ibiza Video: A journalistic crime thriller to speak. As a reminder that this wild story is really true.

The Ibiza Affair, four parts, this Thursday and October 28 in double episodes from 8.15 p.m. on Sky Atlantic and in full on Sky Ticket. The documentary “Das Ibiza-Video” on Sky Ticket and from October 26th on Sky.