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Art Crimes | © unknown media
© unknown media

Art Crimes

  • The World Greatest Thefts (Working title)
Documentary Series | Episodes 1-6 | 2020-2022 | Docu-Series, History, Thriller, True Crime, Whodunit | Germany, Italy

Shooting data

Start of shooting13/09/2020
End of shooting31/01/2022
Filming regionsGermany - Berlin, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden

Project data

Film financing
Length of episode6x 52min
Episodes from/to1-6

Brief synopsis

The most incredible art robberies of the century in six investigative documentary thriller.

Art Crimes take us inside the most unbelievable and intriguing international art robberies of the century. From Amsterdam to Naples, from Rotterdam to Bucharest, from Budapest to Athens each documentary thriller will bring us behind the story on famous art robberies, through the personal experience and recollection of its real protagonists: the thieves and the investigators.

Built with the carefully written dramaturgy borrowed from thriller investigation storytelling, led by its protagonists voices and recollections, together with prosecutors, private detectives, lawyers, art dealers, each film will rebuild with intense personal interviews, live moments, official archives, trial records and intriguing super8mm fiction, the disappearance, investigation and retrieval or loss of some of the world’s most famous paintings. From the 2002 disappearance of two Van Gogh paintings from the VanGogh Museum in Amsterdam by the hand of known thief Octave “The Monkey” Durham with the involvement of the Neapolitan Camorra, to the robbery of Edward Munch’s Scream by ex soccer player Paal Enger and the astute undercover operation to retrieve it, to the greatest heist of the cold war, planned by an Italian gang of criminals officially on holidays in Budapest in 1983… From the Swedish National Museum in Stockholm to a forgotten farmhouse in Eastern Germany, from the baroque church of Saint Francis in Southern Italy to hidden monasteries in Greece, from dodgy art dealers in Amsterdam to undercover Scotland Yard investigators, from small town thieves to the most powerful mafia bosses, lets discover six unbelievable stories, with plot twists, unexpected finales and the unimaginable scenarios of Hollywood films. Yet this is all real.

A journey in the underworld of stolen art, in 6 different decades, hunting the world’s most famous masterpieces: many have returned on the walls of their museums, yet, what is are the stories behind them?

(unknown media)

Crew

ActivityNameComment
Director of photographyJakob Stark
6x90minutes *German Camera Award 2023
6x90minutes *German Camera Award 2023
DirectorStefano Strocchi
DirectorStig Andersen
DirectorGiotto Barberi
DirectorKatinka Zeuner
EditorKatrin Reichwald
editing episode Edvard Munch, 90 min.
editing episode Edvard Munch, 90 min.
EditorChristian R. Timmann
ComposerUwe Bossenz
ComposerEike Hosenfeld
ProducerStefano Strocchi
Line producerNatalie Prinz
09/20 bis 10/22
09/20 bis 10/22
Assistant production managerMelody Prinz
Folge 06 Nizza
Folge 06 Nizza
Set manager/ floor managerMilena Schneider
ShowrunnerStefano Strocchi
CreatorStefano Strocchi
Sound recordist (non fiction)Nikolaus von Schlebrügge

Production companies

CompanyComment
UnknownMedia
DocLab Srl [it]
coproduction
coproduction
RBB - Rundfunk Berlin Brandenburg [de]
coproduction
coproduction
Sky Italia [it]
coproduction
coproduction
Arte [de/fr]
coproduction
coproduction

Distribution / Sales companies

CompanyComment
MetFilm Sales
Worldsales
Worldsales

Awards

Award winnerYearAwardCategory 
Jakob Stark2023German Camera Award [de]
Doku Screen (van Gogh)
Doku Screen (van Gogh)Winner

TV-broadcast

TypeCountryStationDate / TimeComment
First showingGermanyarteThursday, 10/11/2022, 8.15 PMOnline-Premiere 03.11.2022 arte.tv