The Painter and the Thief

"Unlike anything you've seen before..."

"The documentary won a special jury award for creative storytelling at the most recent Sundance Film Festival and it comes to streaming video as one of the year’s most affecting and subtly radical movie experiences."

"Between Kysilkova’s work and theirs, it’s hard to take your eyes off of this film."

"The Painter And The Thief sometimes lands on the wrong side of the line between feeling expertly manipulated and feeling jerked around."

"When Ree first started filming, he couldn’t have known where this story would lead, and in order to re-create that sense of unpredictability, he uses a time-bending nonlinear structure and various sleight-of-hand techniques to deliver information when it’s most effective."

"The film’s sustained intimacy speaks highly of the trust the subjects came to feel for the filmmaker, who is able to cut to the quick as he follows and reveals their life phases while also maintaining a filmmaker’s discreet distance. It’s an unusual look at the slipperiness of the human condition."

"Ree uses dramatic devices to tell this tale, structuring the documentary a bit like a novel."

"The film is most compelling for how it complicates that dynamic, levels the playing field, and leans into the aesthetics of suffering."