''The Painter and the Thief'' is a 2020
Norwegian
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*Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe
*Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway
*Demographics of Norway
*The Norwegian language, including the ...
documentary film directed by .
Synopsis
The documentary film follows Barbora Kysilkova, a talented
Hyperrealism
Jean Baudrillard ( , , ; 27 July 1929 – 6 March 2007) was a French sociologist, philosopher and poet with interest in cultural studies. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as w ...
artist, forming a friendship with Karl-Bertil Nordland, a man convicted of stealing her work from an Oslo art gallery, spanning a period of three years.
Cast
* Barbora Kysilkova
* Karl-Bertil Nordland
* Øystein Stene
Release
The film premiered at the
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...
on January 23, 2020, where it won the
World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Creative Storytelling.
Shortly after,
Neon
Neon is a chemical element with the symbol Ne and atomic number 10. It is a noble gas. Neon is a colorless, odorless, inert monatomic gas under standard conditions, with about two-thirds the density of air. It was discovered (along with krypton ...
acquired
distribution rights
Film distribution (also known as Film exhibition or Film distribution and exhibition) is the process of making a movie available for viewing by an audience. This is normally the task of a professional film distributor, who would determine the mark ...
to the film. It was
released in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
on May 22, 2020.
Background
In an interview quoted in ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'', director
Benjamin Ree stated “The questions I would like to explore here are: what do humans do in order to be seen and appreciated? And what it takes of us to help and see others.”
The idea for the film came when Norwegian film-maker Benjamin Ree read news reports about the robbery of two large oil paintings from
Oslo
Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...
’s ''Galleri Nobe'', in 2015. He contacted the artist, Barbora Kysilkova, a Czech now living in Norway, and began documenting her reaction to the theft of her art-work, two paintings entitled ''Chloe & Emma'' and ''Swan Song''. It took a while to convince Karl-Bertil Nordland to participate, and Ree began filming both of them together on the fourth time they met.
The film started as a
short
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documentary with the filmmakers not knowing what would happen, where the story would go. It was decided to make it a feature film after seeing Nordland's moving first reaction to his portrait by Kysilkova. It was filmed from 2016 to 2019.
The
archival footage
Stock footage, and similarly, archive footage, library pictures, and file footage is film or video footage that can be used again in other films. Stock footage is beneficial to filmmakers as it saves shooting new material. A single piece of stock ...
in the documentary was mostly contributed by a friend of Kysilkova, who had been filming the artist from 2014, including stills and video from the making of the two paintings later stolen. The friend was also at the exhibition, and she participated in the trial. The featured courtroom proceedings are genuine; Kysilkova, unfamiliar with the Norwegian language, had taken a hidden audio recorder to obtain a copy of the trial for translation afterwards. Inadvertently left running, the tape had also captured Kysilkova and Nordland's first meeting - seeking to redress the loss felt from her work being stolen, and “a sort of obligation to continue the story”, the artist had approached the accused during a break to suggest that he should be a subject for her future painting. Kysilkova was also intrigued as to why anyone would steal her relatively unknown work, and Nordland's answer of “Because they were beautiful” piqued her curiosity. The film also uses the actual
CCTV
Closed-circuit television (CCTV), also known as video surveillance, is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors. It differs from broadcast television in that the signal is not openly t ...
footage of the robbery, which was the main evidence in the trial.
Kysilkova spoke
English
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English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
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in the film, as she didn't understand Norwegian.
Ree stated “For me, filmmaking is about asking intellectually stimulating and emotionally engaging questions through observing human behaviour. That’s why I’ve made a movie that asks the complex questions around such a unique and complex relationship as Barbora and Karl-Bertil.” Ree chose to present the film in an unconventional structure - "I wanted a film that tries something new that I haven’t seen in this kind of observational documentary before". "First of all, dramaturgy in a documentary is not only an artistic choice, it’s also an ethical choice. The impression the audience gets of Barbora and Karl Bertil is something they have to live with for the rest of their lives. I really wanted to portray Bertil as charismatic, intelligent, dark and funny, to really show his complexity and get to know him. I thought the only way to do that was to show the world from his point of view. How you portray people in a documentary is closely connected to the ethics of it".
Critical reception
''The Painter and the Thief'' received positive reviews from film critics, mainly for its direction, story, structure and emotional weight. It holds a 'fresh' approval rating on
review aggregator
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website
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, based on critic reviews, with an average of . The site's critical consensus reads, "''The Painter and the Thief'' uses the unlikely bond between a criminal and his victim as the canvas for a compelling portrait of compassion and forgiveness." On
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
, the film is currently assigned a
weighted average
The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...
score of 79 out of 100, based on 33 critic reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Cath Clarke from ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' awarded the film 4 stars out of 5, describing it as "astonishing, emotionally electric" and writing, "What an engrossing film – and the gender reversal of a male muse inspiring a female painter has got to be one small step for art-world equality," while Adrian Horton called the film a "remarkable documentary" that "plays more like a twisting narrative film than real-life portrait."
In his review, Nick Schager from ''
The Daily Beast
''The Daily Beast'' is an American news website focused on politics, media, and pop culture. It was founded in 2008.
It has been characterized as a "high-end tabloid" by Noah Shachtman, the site's editor-in-chief from 2018 to 2021. In a 20 ...
'' describes the story as "a true-crime tale reconfigured into a unique relationship saga, replete with twists, turns, heartbreak, failure and redemption that’s as surprising as it is well-earned." He also praised the film's ending as "unbelievably unexpected, poignant, and altogether perfect."
Peter Debruge wrote for
''Variety'' magazine that its direction and editing "don’t give us all the information we might need to form a clear understanding of their subjects’ actions, yet their approach is not only more artistic but somehow more representative of real life", also noting its "time-bending nonlinear structure and various sleight-of-hand techniques to deliver information when it’s most effective."
Paul Byrnes wrote in his review for ''
The Sydney Morning Herald
''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper ...
'', "The level of trust required to allow a filmmaker to document their lives is in itself moving, but it mirrors the relationship they have with each other," adding that "The slow revelation of
arbora'spain makes clear just how artful Ree’s work on structure has been in this achingly beautiful true story."
Brian Tallerico from ''
RogerEbert.com
''RogerEbert.com'' is an American film review website that archives reviews written by film critic Roger Ebert for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' and also shares other critics' reviews and essays. The website, underwritten by the ''Chicago Sun-Times' ...
'' awarded ''The Painter and the Thief'' 3 stars out of 4, writing that it "illuminates a great deal about the human condition" and that some sequences "are going to stick with me for a long time." He added, "Ree has a very cinematic language, shooting long shots down hallways, trailing his subjects like a
French New Wave
French New Wave (french: La Nouvelle Vague) is a French art film movement that emerged in the late 1950s. The movement was characterized by its rejection of traditional filmmaking conventions in favor of experimentation and a spirit of iconocla ...
director would follow his fictional creations down a sidewalk." However, he felt that the film "does kind of fizzle out in the third act ... I was hoping for something to take the film to the next level in the final section, but the opposite almost happens. A question that feels like it should have been asked long before is saved for the 'climax', and I was reminded of the construction of the film in a negative way."
Writing for the magazine ''
Little White Lies'', Leila Latif commended the director for tackling the film's themes "with gentle curiosity, never pushing the subjects to probe this dynamic too forcefully, but rather allowing it to slowly unveil itself."
David Ehrlich from
IndieWire
IndieWire (sometimes stylized as indieWIRE or Indiewire) is a film industry and review website that was established in 1996. The site's focus was predominantly independent film, although its coverage has grown to "to include all aspects of Hollyw ...
gave the film the grade B−, calling it a "a tender psychosexual tale of art and ownership" and a "nuanced and beguiling new documentary about the various things we all take from each other." He also wrote, "Ree doesn’t pat himself on the back for his efforts to humanize both of his title characters. Instead, ''The Painter and the Thief'' recognizes how art — ostensibly, empathetic art most of all — has a nasty habit of flattening its subject in order to fulfill its audience, and the film does what it can to complicate the privileged gaze of looking at someone like they can’t look at you back."
Awards
The film won the
World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Creative Storytelling in the
2020 Sundance Film Festival
The 2020 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 23 to February 2, 2020. The first lineup of competition films was announced on December 4, 2019. The opening night film was ''Miss Americana'' directed by Lana Wilson and produced by Morgan ...
,
the Golden Firebird Award at
Hong Kong International Film Festival
The Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF), is one of Asia’s oldest international film festivals. Founded in 1976, the festival features different movies, filmmakers from different countries in Hong Kong.
HKIFF screens around 230 films ...
and the Audience Award at
London Film Festival
The BFI London Film Festival is an annual film festival founded in 1957 and held in the United Kingdom, running for two weeks in October with co-operation from the British Film Institute. It screens more than 300 films, documentaries and shor ...
.
Best-of lists
''The Painter and the Thief'' was ranked as the best documentary film of 2020 by the ''
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...
'', ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'', and ''
The Boston Globe
''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...
''.
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Painter and the Thief, The
2020 films
American documentary films
Norwegian documentary films
Biographical documentary films
Documentary films about visual artists
Neon (distributor) films
Sundance Film Festival award winners
2020s American films