In 1951, when Holocaust survivor Emerik Blum founded Energoinvest with 20 employees, his native Bosnia-Herzegovina was largely illiterate and so poor that most towns had no electricity.

But Blum succeeded in what today seems like a contradiction: he built a massive corporate energy and engineering conglomerate in a socialist state.

Over the next few decades, Energoinvest became a powerhouse global conglomerate, headquartered in Yugoslavia. They built power lines and nuclear plants, military aviation guidance systems and computer networks, doing business not only with other socialist countries, but also in the United States, Mexico and the Middle East. Plus, the company did it all under the democratic model of worker self-management — with employees deciding everything from policies affecting them to the composition of the board.

In the hands of Academy-Award-nominated director Jasmila Žbanić, the rise and fall of Energoinvest is an exhilarating portrait of one man, the company he founded, and a now-vanished business model. In interviews, former Energoinvest employees — from top-level executives, to factory workers and Blum’s personal chauffeur, paint a portrait of Blum as wildly ambitious, caring, and humble.

BLUM — MASTERS OF THEIR OWN DESTINY also uses archival footage that captures the dizzying sense of a company that could beat capitalists at their own game, while providing workers with free meals, housing and medical care.

The film is a lively testament to the unwavering power of Blum’s vision, and a reminder that business can thrive under models very different from today’s rapacious capitalism.