Directed by award-winning documentarian Rebecca Dreyfus, Stolen is a must see film for both art lovers and mystery fans. The non-fiction film is about the largest art heist in history, a $300 million 1990 robbery of Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The robbers posed cleverly as Boston policemen and committed the robbery on St. Patrick’s Day. Their booty included paintings by Rembrandt, Degas and Vermeer's "The Concert" (the world's most valuable stolen painting), and other substantial works of art.
Enter 75-year-old detective Harold J. Smith, famous for recovering millions in stolen art and antiquities. Smith has an obsession with solving this canvassed caper, despite a clearly distressing battle with degenerative skin cancer. A true gentleman and family man, Smith is relentless in his pursuit of the works from the Gardner heist.
Narration is provided by Blythe Danner (Isabella Stewart Gardner) and Campbell Scott (Bernard Berenson) along with original music by Peter Golub.
Dreyfus, along with famed documentarian, Albert Maysles, take their cameras from Boston to New York to London, where we meet a Raffles-like character nicknamed “Turbo,” who sincerely believes that the “Irish mafia” of Boston committed the crime in order to provide funds for the IRA in Belfast.
The film received the 2005 Sarasota International Film Festival: Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature and the 2005 NY/Avignon Film Festival: Best Documentary Film and Best Original Film Score Awards. Screened in November in New York City at Hunter College’s Lang Theater as part of the NY/Avignon Film Festival, the documentary was well received by the New York City audience.
Rebecca Dreyfus is an award-winning director, writer and producer. Her first award-winning feature film, Bye-Bye Babushka, opened to critical acclaim in New York and Los Angeles and has been shown on television in more than 25 countries. Her two short films, The Waiting and Roadblock, have also received prizes around the world. The New York Foundation recently named Dreyfus a filmmaking fellow for the Arts (NYFA) and a screenwriting fellow by The Sundance Film Institute.
