While the plaudits have been heaped on Inside Job (2010), another film dealing with the financial crisis met with considerably less acclaim on its release a year earlier. Collapse tells the story of Michael Ruppert, a former police detective turned investigative reporter whose newsletter, ‘From the Wilderness’, broke numerous stories throughout the ‘90s and foresaw the coming of the credit crunch - resulting, Ruppert claims, in persecution from the powers that be.

While researching a screenplay on CIA drug smuggling operations, filmmaker Chris Smith - American Movie (1999), The Yes Men (2003) - met with Ruppert. Concluding that Ruppert’s story was much more captivating than the one he was working on, Smith shifted focus to a study of this most unlikely whistleblower and radical thinker.

Collapse’s visual style clearly owes a debt to Errol Morris, using stock clips and archive footage to dramatize the whirlwind of information presented by Ruppert in his sit-down interview. Ruppert clearly saw this as his opportunity to present his beliefs in a frank and definitive manner, speaking with a breathless desperation to convey his message to the world - the fact that he gave up researching and writing shortly hereafter gives the film a valedictory feel.