When we first meet the five subjects of Piet Baumgartner’s The Driven Ones, they are underlining their credentials in one-on-one interviews.
For über confident Tobias, “going for the top” is what drives him. Sara, meanwhile tells how she is “intuitive, empathetic, assertive,” while David wants to achieve “above average growth in a start-up.” Feifei, the first-generation daughter of a Chinese mother and father, is more conciliatory and a little less abrasive. She wants to “add as much value…have as big an impact as possible.” Frederic has something of the outlier about him, the son of two wildly successful entrepreneurs and a little reserved as he walks in the shadow of his Alpha dad, but an interesting study nonetheless.
As the film progresses, the success of at least one of the quintet is spectacular, while others set their targets a little lower, merely to be managers within consultancy films (albeit on six figure salaries). At one point, Baumgartner was denied any more access to Tobias by the firm he worked with, and while another subject’s business idea seems to peter out, at least they have an exquisite family country pile to return to, lick their wounds and contemplate future empire building.
The director observes how success is expected to beget success, and there is an added pressure therefore on students whose parents have paved the way and are now expecting to see similar levels of achievement in their offspring. “It’s very hard to have this background. Sometimes I felt that there was no other option than to go into big business,” says Baumgartner.
At the end of this gripping doc, all five gather (a full seven years after their initial university interviews) to reflect upon their work and their progress, while paying lip service to their social and ecological responsibilities within a very much evolving planet.
The origins of the film can be traced back to Baumgartner’s time as an economic journalist. He would regularly interview top CEOs but end up being none the wiser as to their motivations, or what moved them. “The CEOs I interviewed had a lot of communication training, and in the end they didn’t tell me anything in interview,” he says, remarking how it seemed they were speaking a different language. But Baumgartner wanted more, he wanted to understand their rationale, their raison d’être. “When you are a leader, a CEO in a global company, then you have huge power which is even greater than politics these days. And this is what I wanted to understand. Who are these people? What are their goals? What are their ideals?”
So the Swiss filmmaker decided to find out at source, with a group of future leaders, albeit at the beginning of their careers. “We wanted to have a long period where we could really get to know these people. I was not interested at all in the black and white, in a good cop/bad cop. I was interested in the gray zones.”
The director expresses his surprise that, even though there was instruction on the ethics of business during the Masters course, such was the workload and pressure on the students and the enormous requirement for them to deliver, there was no way they would be able to apply a business plan within a workable ethical framework.
“The pressure [on the course] is huge. And afterwards they’re working 70-80 hours per week, so they don’t have time to think about bigger topics,” says Baumgartner. “I would say the smartest people are attending this Masters program and they will be top business leaders of the future, but they don’t have time to think about social responsibility. This is something which clashes in my mind.”
That said, the school is presented in a positive light and one can imagine that it will be fielding many enquiries from the whizzkid wannabees who watch Baumgartner’s film.
Arguably the most fascinating character (if you discount Frederic and his escape to a music fest with newly peroxided hair) is Feifei who weeps at the memory of the prejudice meted out to her smart, capable and highly educated Chinese parents who were continually sidelined and overlooked. “But you’re just an immigrant,” was the phrase her parents continually heard, Feifei says.
What seems instructive (and somewhat depressing) is how, even now, there seems to be a disturbing lack of black and brown faces on the Masters course, at least as seen through Baumgartner’s lens.
The Driven Ones, produced by Swiss production entity Catpics and sold by Autlook Film Sales, world-premiered recently in Zurich where it was very well received among public and critics alike. “It’s fascinating how much interest there is,” observes Baumgartner. “I was not sure at all if people would [react to] this potentially boring world where you just see people at a desk, in taxis or in airplanes, or if it would be an interesting and emotional film for people to watch. But it seems it is. Now I’m very interested to see the reaction from an international audience.”
