“Since My Background was from Journalism I Had to Learn Film Language, and Relearn What I Thought About Storytelling”: Benjamin Ree on His Sundance Doc The Painter and the Thief

Spectacularly cinematic and employing a risk-taking structure that keeps the viewer as off-balance as the film’s emotionally fragile protagonists, The Painter and the Thief is the second feature-length doc from Norwegian director Benjamin Ree. (Ree’s prior film Magnus, a coming-of-age tale about the chess prodigy Magnus Carlsen, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2016.)

The film follows the stranger-than-fiction story of Barbora Kysilkova and Karl-Bertil Nordland, the former a Czech naturalist painter living in Oslo, the latter a Norwegian ex-con struggling with drug addiction. Their worlds collide when Nordland and an accomplice steal two of Kysilkova’s artworks from a local gallery, resulting in the men’s fast apprehension but not the recovery of the paintings.

Instead of leaving things to the authorities, however, the curious artist approaches Nordland at his court hearing. While he gives up no information as to the whereabouts of the missing pictures, he does agree to her request to paint his portrait. And sit for her he does. Over many years, many portraits, and many twists and turns in their separate but ultimately intertwining lives.

To find out more about Ree’s unconventional approach to a highly unusual story Filmmaker caught up with the director a few days before the film’s Sundance (World Documentary Competition) debut on January 23rd.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.