An explanation on YouTube about why there are 2 endings …
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — The Edukators
fankhauser24 — 15 years ago(March 04, 2011 05:08 AM)
Some of the other threads on here are a few years old now so I thought I'd just bypass all of that for the people who, like me, have only just seen the film and post a link to a YouTube clip that explains why there are two endings. The version I saw, in Australia, was where it ends with Hardenberg looking guilty in the cop car, the special ops team breaking in to Jan & Peter's apartment, our 3 amigos in a hotel room in Spain somewhere and the film fading out with the note on the wall. Personally, I like that ending but there was another one which some of us/most of us haven't seen
Firstly, here is the explanation:
"Non-German theatrical versions omit a scene in the end. The reason for this is that the scene had not been finished at the time the movie was shown at the Cannes film festival. But the distribution rights had already been sold to 44 countries and the director didn't want to force local distributors to take the new ending."
Secondly, here is a link to the clip - note it's not subtitled but if you have a look in the comments, someone has put a translation there
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YN5D6w2RF8
Sorry - don't know how to make that a link!
I found this quite helpful - I hope you do too!
Thanks for sharing, I didn't even know that there was an alternate ending.