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New Trailer for ‘Ruben Brandt, Collector’ Showcases A Stylish Blend of Art & Noir

Milorad Krstić’s animated heist thriller ‘Ruben Brandt, Collector’ has its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival.

Hungarian animated heist thriller ‘Ruben Brandt, Collector’ is written and directed by Milorad Krstić.

Courtesy of Variety, here’s a first look at Hungarian animated heist thriller Ruben Brandt, Collector, which just made its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival.

Set against a stylish noir backdrop blending the art world art and psychotherapy, Ruben Brandt, Collector features original music composed by Tibor Cari alongside some of the greatest hits of the 20th century art world, sprinkled with visual references to films by Eisenstein, Hitchcock and Tarantino. The English-language feature was directed and written by Milorad Krstić and produced with the support of the Hungarian National Film Fund by Peter Miskolczi, Radmila Roczkov, Hermina Roczkov, János Kurdy-Fehér and Krstić.

In addition to his career as a filmmaker, Krstić works as an artist across a number of other disciplines, including sculpture, drawing and painting. Born in Slovenia (then part of the former Yugoslavia), Krstić has lived in Budapest, Hungary since 1989. His 1995 short film My Baby Left Me won both the Silver Bear Award for best short animation from the Berlin Film Festival and the award for best first film at Annecy.

Ruben Brandt, Collector operates on two levels, according to a statement made by the director: as “action-propelled crime story” and “a time surf over the waves of the 20th century’s art and movie world.” It centers on Ruben Brandt, a famous psychotherapist who is forced to steal paintings from world-renowned art galleries and private art collections in order to stop his terrible nightmares.

Here’s the full synopsis:

Brilliant psychotherapist Ruben Brandt suffers from wild, reality-twisting nightmares. The only possible treatment is to rob 25 paintings from the most famous museums in the world.
 
Each day, Ruben Brandt and his gang strike: The Louvre, the Guggenheim Museum, the Tate Gallery, the Uffizi, the Hermitage.... In twenty days they commit twenty robberies.
 
The international media are rife with sensational reports and wild speculation about the enigmatic crimes. Ruben Brandt and his team soon become the most wanted criminals in the world. With each theft, the price on their heads rises exponentially, reaching one billion dollars. An army of hell-bent bounty hunters, gangsters and adventurers are mobilized.
 
Mike Kowalski, a private detective from Washington, D.C. and a leading expert on museum robberies and international art trafficking, is entrusted with the investigation of the “Collector Case.”
 
As Kowalski discovers a pattern to the robberies, predicting which painting will be next, the danger intensifies as the underworld gets wind of his investigation. Then he discovers a shocking family secret, which connects him to the “Collector.”

“I created this film as an audiovisual symphony, which means that the story, the graphics, animation, music and sound are all equally important,” Krstić tells Variety.

Watch the trailer in the player below, and head over to Variety to read the full story:

Jennifer Wolfe's picture

Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.