Benjamin Ree
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“This Film is Done by YouTubers”: Benjamin Ree on The Remarkable Life of Ibelin
In 2020’s The Painter and the Thief, Norwegian director Benjamin Ree told the story of the unlikely friendship between artist Barbora Kysilkova and heroin addict Karl-Bertil Nordland through overlapping, sometimes contradictory points of view. He has used this approach again for The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, a telling—and repeated retelling—of the short life of Mats Steen, a young, disabled Norwegian gamer who died in 2014 from the rare degenerative disease Duchenne muscular dystrophy. While his loving family was devoted to giving Steen the best life he could have, in the immediate aftermath of his death they grieved the fact that […]
by Carol Nahra on Oct 25, 2024 -
“Should You Give the Person a Hug, or Should You Continue Filming?”: Benjamin Ree on His Art World Crime Doc The Painter and the Thief
The following interview with director Benjamin Ree about his documentary The Painter and the Thief was published during the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. It’s being rerun now to coincide with the virtual cinema and VOD release of the film from NEON. 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 […]
by Lauren Wissot on May 23, 2020 -
“The Main Painting That Is Stolen Is of a Dead Swan”: Benjamin Ree | The Painter and the Thief
Whether capturing or creating a world, the objects onscreen tell as much of a story as the people within it. Whether sourced or accidental, insert shot or background detail, what prop or piece of set decoration do you find particularly integral to your film? What story does it tell? The most important objects in our film are the missing paintings. The film is about a painter and a thief. Two paintings are stolen from Oslo-based artist Barbora Kysilkova, and the police catch the thieves but the paintings are never found. Barbora attends the court case hoping to find clues for […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2020
