Ruben Brandt, Collector · reception & legacy
2018 · Milorad Krstić
How Ruben Brandt, Collector has been received, argued over, and remembered.
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.
Named by the director
Influences Milorad Krstić has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.
- 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.