Why ‘The Painter and the Thief’ Is Neon’s New Oscar Doc Contender
Norwegian documentary “The Painter and the Thief” picked up the Special Jury Prize for Creative Storytelling from the Sundance Film Festival in January because the movie blends fact and an unfolding narrative drama in an unusually artful way. Neon picked up the film, which will, due to the pandemic, hit VOD platforms only on May 22.When art-heist junkie Benjamin Ree, who is 30, embarked on his second nonfiction feature, Czech painter Barbora Kysilkova had already reached out to drug addict Karl-Bertil Nordland, who served 75 days in prison with an accomplice for stealing two of her prize paintings from Oslo’s Gallery Nobel in 2015. “I wonder if I could paint you?” she asked him.Archive footage shows us the artist painting one of the stolen works as well as audio and drawings of her first courtroom approach to the thief. When she asks Nordland why he stole her work, he said, “Because it was beautiful. ...