Ruben Brandt, Collector

The psychotherapist Ruben Brandt has the same nightmares every night, and the figures in them are recognisable: people stepping out of famous paintings to attack him. Four of his patients, all professional thieves, decide to help. The therapy is simple: steal those paintings and bring them to him. Thirteen works from thirteen museums. Milorad Krstić writes and directs, in his first feature, made in his sixties. The whole value is in the visual language. Krstić is a painter and draws his characters on cubist logic: faces seen from several angles at once, eyes side by side, space that does not obey perspective. The choice suits the story, since the subject is the damage art history does inside one person's head. There are hundreds of references; Botticelli, Velázquez, Warhol, Hopper and Manet are used directly, and some compositions are known paintings rebuilt. It was produced in Hungary with a small crew and screened widely at international animation festivals. Who it is for: viewers who like animation watched with art history in hand, and visual games. Who it is not for: the story is weak and the characters have no depth. The film works essentially as a visual catalogue.