Sightlines · reception

How Ruben Brandt, Collector was received

2018 · Milorad Krstić · Ruben Brandt, Collector on Sightlines

The arc

A festival curio at Locarno 2018 that Sony Pictures Classics gambled on for a small US release, it's since become a word-of-mouth discovery — the animated heist film art-history people keep pressing on each other.

What’s debated

The perennial split: is it a dazzling, dense love letter to art history or a two-hour game of spot-the-reference in search of a story?

Its footprint

It lives on as a 'spot the painting' challenge — the film packs in hundreds of artwork references, and its two-eyed-on-one-side-of-the-face Picasso-ish character designs are instantly recognizable in any screenshot.

Where it stands

A cult deep-cut of 2010s adult animation — a fixture of 'underseen animated films you must watch' lists rather than the mainstream canon.

Did you know? Krstić directed this, his first feature, at 66 — more than two decades after his 1995 short 'My Baby Left Me' won the Golden Bear for Best Short Film at Berlin.

Named by the director

• Alfred Hitchcock — Krstić said 'the whole film is an homage to Hitchcock,' whom he even hid in the film as ice cubes in a character's drink.