Shiny_Flakes: The Teenage Drug Lord

Maximilian Schmidt was a teenager living with his mother in Leipzig when he ran an internet shop out of his room. What he sold was drugs; orders came through the site and the packages went by ordinary post. He ran it alone, built his own software and operated like a customer service. When he was caught in 2015 more than a hundred kilos were found in the flat. Eva Müller directs. The documentary was released on Netflix in 2021. At its centre is a long interview Schmidt gave to camera after serving his sentence. His account is cold and technical; he describes the business as a logistics problem and shows no regret. The documentary uses footage Schmidt shot himself; the young man had recorded his packing and stock work on his own phone. The same case became the source for a fiction series on Netflix, and the documentary shows the reality behind it. Its problem is distance. The narrative leans too far on Schmidt's own account; the buyers, the families and the side of addiction are almost never seen. Who it is for: anyone interested in crime documentary and in the underground economy that runs over the internet. Who it is not for: the critical view is weak, it rests on one source, and the narrative drifts at times into the tone of a success story.