Who Am I 2014

Benjamin Engel, a hacker from Berlin, Tom Schilling sits in an interrogation room. The officer in charge tells Hanne Lindberg, Trine Dyrholm, Head of the Cyber Division of Europol, that Benjamin asked to conduct the interrogation. Benjamin says that he has information regarding FR13NDS (/frɛndz/), a notorious hacking group of four members connected to the Russian cyber mafia, and MRX, an infamous hacker known on Darknet; he tells her that he could give them both to Hanne if she listens to him. Having no choice, Hanne sits down.

Benjamin unfolds his life story with a quiet determination, presenting himself as a kind of unlikely superhero. He explains that he never had parents—his father abandoned the family, and his mother killed herself when he was eight—leaving him to grow up with his ailing grandmother. He portrays his “superpower” as invisibility, insisting that he was overlooked for most of his childhood and found a sense of belonging only online. He says he learned programming and hacked his first system at fourteen, and that the internet gave him the camaraderie he never found in real life. While most of his time has been spent on the Darknet, he speaks of MRX, a legendary figure whose true identity remains a mystery and who can supposedly hack into any system. Benjamin longs to emulate MRX and be welcomed into that exclusive circle.

The story turns to a narrower focus on his personal life. He recalls his inability to attend university and his job as a pizza delivery person to pay the bills. One night, while delivering to a group of students, he sees Marie, a girl from his school days he has loved for years. He decides to become a “superhero” for her and to help her with exams. He hacks into the university’s servers to download the questions but is caught by a security guard and forced to perform community service as punishment. During that community service, he meets Max, a fellow hacker who is the opposite of him—charismatic, cocky, and confident. This meeting marks the beginning of a close, dangerous friendship.

Max soon introduces Benjamin to his inner circle—Stephan and Paul—and Benjamin proves himself as a hacker of value. Max explains the concept of social engineering as the greatest form of hacking, and the group, calling themselves CLAY—short for Clowns Laughing At You—uses Benjamin’s house as a base after forcing his grandmother into a nursing home because of her Alzheimer’s. They begin to pull off pranks and stunts around Berlin, winning popularity on social media. Their reckless thrill-seeking catches MRX’s attention, a figure Benjamin idolizes and obsesses over.

Emboldened by their initial successes, CLAY entertains a far more audacious plan: hack the main building of Germany’s Central Intelligence Agency, the BND. They employ dumpster diving and phishing to infiltrate the building, infiltrating internal servers and even printing their own logo, the bold banner “NO SYSTEM IS SAFE,” across the building to broadcast their presence. The attempt draws MRX’s lingering gaze, and the group revels in the idea of shocking the world with a daring act.

A brutal turn of events follows. Benjamin returns to the club after their initial triumph and discovers Max kissing Marie. Fueled by jealousy and wounded pride, he refuses to let them back into his house and later offends Marie when she visits. Feeling inferior, he secretly reaches out to MRX, offering a trove of data he downloaded from the BND—information that would surely elevate MRX’s status. MRX is impressed, and the group expects their next move to seal their reputation. The tension within CLAY erupts in anger, and a confrontation leaves Benjamin battered by Paul when he sees the fallout from the earlier rift.

The plot thickens as a shocking piece of news arrives: a member of FR13NDS, Krypton, has been murdered. Benjamin admits that he provided the BND data to MRX, and the group quickly learns that Krypton was a double agent working with Hanne to expose MRX and FR13NDS. CLAY is suddenly branded a terrorist group for hacking the information, forcing them to go on the run and clear their name.

To salvage their position, Benjamin is ordered to contact MRX. He is tasked with hacking into Europol’s database in exchange for MRX’s true identity, using a hacking tool to facilitate the intrusion. The group dissolves their hard drives in acid to erase evidence and travels to Europol’s headquarters in The Hague to break in. They encounter a well-guarded fortress: a secured building that resists their efforts, a sealed sewer system, and a protective layer of security that makes entry nearly impossible.

Benjamin, however, notices a chance—an opportunity created by a group of scholars visiting the building. One man drops his visitor card, and Benjamin uses Max’s social engineering guidance to impersonate an associate and gain entry. He plants a hacking device inside the building and manages to access Europol’s internal servers, secretly encoding a Trojan horse that would grant MRX entrance while exposing Benjamin if MRX probes too deeply. MRX, anticipating this, captures Benjamin on camera with a webcam snapshot, revealing his plans and forcing Benjamin to flee as a group of Russian mobsters closes in.

Benjamin returns to the hotel where CLAY had been staying, only to find the trio murdered. Realizing that MRX and FR13NDS could silence him forever, he chooses to hand himself over to Hanne, claiming that he hacked her profile and learned personal information about her. Hanne—already suspended for failing to capture the suspects—agrees to place Benjamin into a witness protection program in exchange for turning over the group.

In a tense sequence, Benjamin logs in as MRX and spreads rumors that MRX is a snitch, triggering MRX to force his way into the Darknet with dangerous methods, and Benjamin’s gambit pays off when MRX is exposed as a 19-year-old American boy from New York City, arrested by the FBI in a café.

Yet the turning point arrives when Hanne notices a wound running through Benjamin’s palm—the same wound Max received when a nail was driven through his hand. It becomes clear that Max, Stephan, and Paul were all fabrications of his mind. A doctor confirms that his mother suffered from multiple personality disorder and committed suicide, suggesting a hereditary link. Hanne connects the strands of the mystery and realizes that Benjamin was CLAY all along; he staged the betrayals, hacked the BND alone, and planted WWII-era bullets in the hotel to simulate a massacre, creating the illusion of a multi-person group through his illness. Faced with the reality that someone with such mental distress cannot be offered witness protection, Hanne initially balks. Yet she ultimately changes her mind, granting him access to what she calls a genuine witness protection program, which reveals itself as a comprehensive database containing information on all German citizens. Benjamin’s identity shifts entirely, allowing him to disappear.

As he steps onto a Scandlines ferry heading north, Benjamin is joined by Marie, Hannah Herzsprung, along with Max, Elyas M’Barek, Stephan, and Paul. In narration, he claims that he executed the greatest social-engineering hack in history, and the scene shifts back to the hotel where the others appear alive and ready to help him. Marie visits them, confirming that mentally ill individuals cannot be granted protection, but her presence also reveals an alternative plan: Benjamin will dictate the story to Hanne, feeding her deliberate plot holes that she will try to decipher as she processes her grief. In the server room, it becomes clear that Benjamin never changed his identity; he erased it entirely and left the door open for his own continued invisibility.

At a press conference announcing the defeat of FR13NDS and MRX, Hanne experiences a sudden insight and smiles, recognizing the truth she could not quite see before. The film closes with the idea that Benjamin’s invisibility is more than a technical flaw or a social hack—it is a refusal to be seen on anyone else’s terms, a dangerous, mesmerizing performance that leaves the real truth tucked away beneath the surface.