Das Experiment

Das Experiment ("The Experiment" in the US) is a 2001 German movie that was inspired by the story of the Stanford prison experiment.

Storyline

The main character, Tarek Fahd (played by Moritz Bleibtreu), participated with another 19 candidates in a prison-simulation experiment for 2 weeks, which was advertised on the newspaper. The candidates were randomly selected to be either prisoner or prison guard. While the experiment went on smoothly at the beginning, the situation became worse throughout the experiment. The professor who organized the experiment, however, refused to terminate it when his assistant spotted issues in the candidates' behaviors. On the other hand, the main character used his eyeglasses-disguised camera to take records of what was happening throughout the experiment for the media.

The story also featured the relationship between Tarek and a girl who he met during a car accident.

Although the movie dramatized events in the movie and no one really died in Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment, the experiment was prematurely ended after six days out of a planned two weeks. The college students assigned to be prisoners were "withdrawing and behaving in pathological ways" as a result of the degrading treatment they received. Quite a few scenes in the movie actually happened in the original experiment, including the early fire extinguisher scene and the prisoners being forced to clean the toilets by their bare hands.

External links

• Official site
• IMDB.com entry