On April 10, a new financial documentary titled “This Is Not Financial Advice” will be having a free screening at 5:30 p.m. inside of Homer Babbidge Library at the University of Connecticut. Directed by Chris Temple, the co-founder of Optimist, a non-profit film studio based in Los Angeles, the film follows four different people as they invest in cryptocurrency and explores their different ways of approaching those investments.
The movie was created to be an educational piece for people to learn about how to properly handle investing and their finances. To accompany it, Optimist created a free curriculum which was “designed to engage and imbue students with the practical financial lessons observed in the documentary.” This curriculum has already been distributed and utilized by over 40,000 students.
In a virtual interview, Temple talked about his experience as a filmmaker, the inspiration behind the film and what he hopes it achieves.
“We started this film in early 2021 at a time where it felt like everything in financial markets was going up. Everybody was talking about getting rich quick on crypto. The movie was inspired by FOMO, the fear of missing out on opportunities to invest,” Temple said.
The film shows the differences between investing strategies and financial advice in hopes that viewers will get “a deeper understanding of their own relationship with money and their own risk tolerance, and to take advantage of financial opportunities and not get caught up in a get rich quick scheme,” according to Temple.
“This Is Not Financial Advice” follows four individuals: Glauber Contessoto, Rayz Rayl, Kayla Kilbride and Senay Kenfe. Contessoto, the star of the film, is an immigrant working two jobs and becomes a millionaire after investing in Dogecoin. Apart from documenting the experiences of the four, Temple also conducted over 300 interviews with investors and financial advisors, one being Mark Cuban, as well as authors and journalists.
“Cinematically and story-wise our goal was to make it play like an entertaining film”
Chris Temple, the co-founder of Optimist
Although the film is a documentary, Temple wanted it to be as engaging as possible.
“Cinematically and story-wise our goal was to make it play like an entertaining film,” Temple commented. “We wanted people to be able to learn about their relationship with money with a fun and cinematic experience, and not just a talking head interview with Warren Buffet telling you what to do with your money.”
Temple described himself as an “accidental filmmaker” since he wasn’t a film major in college, nor did he ever take a film class. Temple got into film when he and Zach Ingrasci, a friend of Temple’s who went on to co-found Optimist, decided to try to live on $1 per day for two months in Guatemala. They decided to film the experiment on a whim, eventually becoming Temple’s first film, “Living On One Dollar.”
“When we graduated, we decided that we would give ourselves six months to promote the film and see if it would make a difference in the world,” Temple said. “[Ingrasci and I] created [Optimist] coming out of our college dorm room as we graduated.”
Temple and Ingrasci have been working at Optimist for the past 15 years and have since created over 15 new films, continuing to build off their experience for every new documentary.
“I think every film helps inform the next; I was able to look at [“This Is Not Financial Advice”] through the lens of wealth inequality in America because of [my previous documentaries],” Temple said. “You can’t look at the issue of poverty without looking at immigration and you can’t understand climate change without understanding human migration.”
“This Is Not Financial Advice” first premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2023 and went on to be shown at film festivals throughout the summer and fall. The film recently launched on Apple TV and is currently doing a tour across 20 cities, their next stop being Storrs.
For more information about “This Is Not Financial Advice” or Optimist, you can visit Optimist’s website.