Exit Through the Gift Shop

The most durable thing about this film is that nobody can be certain it is true. Thierry Guetta is introduced as a French immigrant in Los Angeles obsessed with filming street artists. He records everyone, Banksy included, for years, then puts the camera down, becomes an artist himself under the name Mr. Brainwash, and stages an enormous show. The show works. The work sells high. Several journalists suggested Guetta is an invention, part of a scheme by Banksy to expose the faddishness of the art market. Banksy denies it, saying everything in the film is real and that it would not be this funny if he had made it up. Guetta told the Los Angeles Times in 2011 that the film is one hundred per cent real. The honest position is that the film's question is not whether Guetta is real, but whether that category still means anything once attention and narrative have become an artwork's primary materials. Who it is for: viewers curious about how the art market operates and where value comes from. Who it is not for: anyone after a history of street art. This may be a joke rather than a documentary, and it will never admit it.