Slovenian artist Milorad Krstić debuted his first feature film, the R-rated animated crime thriller “Ruben Brandt, Collector” earlier this year at the Locarno Film Festival. Now, after making the rounds at the fall film festivals and earning two Annie Award nominations, Sony Pictures Classics is set to release the film to general audiences.
The first trailer for “Ruben Brandt, Collector” shows just why Krstić’s film drew so much attention as it premiered around the world. The film tells the story of an art collector named, as you might have guessed, Ruben Brandt, as he hires a thief to steal some of the best works of art to add to his coveted collection. However, while that sounds like a typical heist thriller that you might have seen a million times before, Krstić animated this film to look like a work of art, itself.
And we’re not talking beautifully symmetrical art, either. No, ‘Ruben Brandt’ features characters designed as uniquely as the art they are attempting to steal. Faces are contorted. Backgrounds are beautifully designed. And the action has a sort of flair found in older animation. This isn’t the same pop art explosion that “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” might be, but ‘Ruben Brandt’ is an animated feature that deserves to be held up to that high standard in 2018.
Sony Pictures Classics hasn’t yet revealed a release date, but “Ruben Brandt, Collector” is scheduled to hit sometime in 2019.
Here’s the synopsis:
Ruben Brandt, a famous psychotherapist, is forced to steal 13 paintings from the world’s renowned museums and private collections to prevent his suffering from terrible nightmares he has as a result of subliminal messaging he received as a child. Accompanied by his four patients, he and his band of thieves strike regularly and with great success: The Louvre, Tate, Uffizi, Hermitage, the Museum of Modern Art. “The Collector” quickly becomes the most wanted criminal in the world. Gangsters and headhunters chase him around the world while the reward for his capture keeps rising, approaching a hundred million dollars. A cartel of insurance companies entrusts Mike Kowalski, a private detective and leading expert on art theft, to solve the “Collector Case.”