The financial crisis has been addressed in audiovisual media in a wide range of different approaches: from fictional Hollywood films to TV News. Integral to the media coverage (Meissner 2012, Eder 2014) that establishes, shapes and relates to a discourse of the financial crisis have been different formats of documentaries (cinema features, TV reports, online-videos). More than the daily news coverage these documentaries aim not only at a broader understanding of the crisis by contextualizing events, facts and economic terms but at the relation of the spectator towards it creating moods, opinions and perspectives on the financial crisis. This paper will reconstruct the process of positioning the spectator by analyzing the rhetorics in an exemplary case study. Affectively grounded rhetorics aim at processes of meaning making as well as persuasive strategies and appeals to action. Against the backdrop of different contexts and locations of presentation especially the Internet and forms of online-distribution e. g. in activist approaches (Plunder: The Crime of Our Time, USA 2009) a focus will lie on the heterogeneous materials and sources of archival footage. What role do their textures and material qualities play within their audiovisual structures and audiovisual gestures of persuasion and meaning making? By looking at the circulation and re-figuration of (metonymical) images of the crisis (e. g. from news broadcasts) I want to examine how the relation of different forms of media coverage is articulated by the films themselves. An encompassing approach to audiovisual rhetorics can’t rely on simple analogies of film and speech act applying linguistic principles of rhetorics, but should engage with the specific conditions of the process of film viewing (Joost 2008, Scheuermann 2008). This case study will take into account the dynamic composition of images and sounds using digital filmanalytical tools. References: Nichols, Bill (1991) Representing Reality. Issues and Concepts in Documentary. Bloomington. Eder, Jens (2014): “Bilder der Finanzkrise Interventionen des Dokumentarfilms“. In: montage/AV 23(2), pp. 35-58. Joost, Gesche (2008) Bild-Sprache. Die audio-visuelle Rhetorik des Films . Bielefeld. Meissner, Miriam (2012) “Portraying the global financial crisis: Myth, aesthetics, and the city”. In: NECSUS. European Journal of Media Studies 1(1), pp. 98-125. Scheuermann, Arne (2008) Zur Theorie des Filmemachens. Flugzeugabstürze, Affekttechniken, Film als rhetorisches Design. München.