Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
When two of artist Barbora Kysilkova’s most valuable paintings are stolen from a gallery at Frogner in Oslo, the police are able to find the thief after a few days, but the paintings are nowhere to be found. Barbora goes to the trial in hopes of finding clues, but instead she ends up asking the thief if she can paint a portrait of him. This will be the start of a very unusual friendship. Over three years, the cinematic documentary follows the incredible story of the artist looking for her stolen paintings, while at the same time turning the thief into art.
The Painter and the Thief is a remarkably distinctive documentary that unfolds with the narrative tension and emotional complexity of a fiction film. Its central conceit — an artist befriending and painting her thief — is genuinely singular, and director Benjamin Ree masterfully structures the story by later revealing the thief's perspective on pivotal scenes already shown, creating a prismatic, emotionally devastating effect. The plot earns a 4 for its organic, unpredictable arc that deepens into questions of addiction, trauma, and the redemptive power of being truly seen. Novelty is high because the film's formal structure and its subject matter feel completely one-of-a-kind. Cinematography and acting (in the documentary sense of naturalistic presence) are solid but not exceptional — the camera work is intimate without being groundbreaking. The ending, while emotionally resonant, tapers rather than lands with a decisive note, settling into ambiguity in a way that feels earned but not fully cathartic.