Sociologist Manuel Castells convenes a small circle of international scholars he calls the Aftermath Network, meeting every summer in Lisbon since the 2008 financial crisis to argue about what it actually broke. The film follows their conversations as Castells, communication scientist Terhi Rantanen, sociologists Michel Wieviorka and John Thompson, cultural scientist Sarah Banet-Weiser, and historian Rosalind Williams work through a question that frames the whole discussion: three years after Lehman Brothers collapsed and public money rescued the banks, why is the public sector under austerity while banking profits recover? Each thinker brings a different discipline to bear, treating the crisis as more than financial, a rupture in trust, work, and social cohesion across Europe and the United States. There is no reenactment or archival montage here, just recorded discussion among people trained to notice what official narratives leave out. The film was made by VPRO and first broadcast in 2011, catching the argument while the crisis itself was still changing shape.