Cleveland vs. Wall Street — Our Housing Crisis Hits the Big Screen This Week

Cleveland returns to the big screen this week with the local premiere of Cleveland Versus Wall Street, the most talked-about Forest City flick that has nothing to do with Charlie Sheen. Just like Cleveland itself, the movie has already stirred up interest overseas thanks to its innovative mesh of fact and fiction.

Back in the late ’00s, Swiss director Jean-Stéphane Bron began researching a film about the intersection of the global financial markets and politics. When he came across a small writeup in a French newspaper on Cleveland’s quixotic campaign to hold 21 banks accountable for the foreclosure crisis, Bron had a hunch he’d found the context for his documentary. But when the director made his first trip to Northeast Ohio in 2008, he didn’t know his Christmas Ale from his Christmas Story.

This article appears in Mar 30 – Apr 5, 2011.