ABOUT
Plunderer: The Life and Times of a Nazi Art Thief is a feature-length documentary about art stolen from Jews by the Nazis. It focuses on Bruno Lohse, Hermann Göring’s art dealer in Paris during the war, who prospered by selling stolen art for sixty years after the war while families struggled to regain their paintings and memories.The film explores the the art markets–from wartime Paris to postwar Munich and Switzerland to modern America, the center of the global art trade today (its cultural heights and its murkier tax havens) and to the restitution culture of lost art collections.
No other film has detailed up-close the workings of ex-Nazi art dealers like Lohse, who operated their own postwar “Odessa” network. And none has shone such a light on the art market, which along with drugs and weapons is one of the last unregulated billion-dollar markets on earth. The film asks questions about the failures of postwar justice and the continuing complicity of governments and the art trade in unpunished crimes.
SCREENINGS
Past:
Worldwide Premiere: November 17 and 19, DOCNYC
February 11, 7 p.m., the West Side Jewish Community Center.
Upcoming:
February 19 and 26, 9 p.m. (check local times), PBS. Watch on PBS: Plunderer: The Life and Times of a Nazi Art Thief (Part One)
February 25, 7 p.m., Atlanta Jewish Film Festival.
March 4, 2:55 p.m., Atlanta Jewish Film Festival.
March 23, 11:30 a.m., National Center for Jewish Film’s Annual Film Festival
Spring 2025, Arte
FILMMAKERS
Director Hugo Macgregor has been shortlisted for a BAFTA and nominated numerous times for Grierson, Royal Television Society, and Emmy awards. His films include the acclaimed BBC series The Romantics & Us; Simon Schama’s The Story of the Jews (“Over the Rainbow,” BBC/PBS); The History of Now; Civilizations; The Ascent of Woman; and Becoming Matisse (BBC2), which combined animation with testimony from the Matisse family to tell the story of Matisse’s early life.
Producer John S. Friedman was the lead producer on Marcel Ophuls’s Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie, which received the Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary in 1989 and the 1988 International Critics Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. He co-directed and co-produced Stealing the Fire, chosen by the International Documentary Association (IDA) as a finalist for best documentary of 2002.
PRESS
The Forward, “Hermann Göring’s personal art dealer plundered the world for decades; his victims’ descendants are still seeking justice,” By Olivia Haynie, November 25, 2024
The Arts Fuse, “Film Reviews: At DOC NYC — Scenes of Crimes,” by David D’Darcy, December 26, 2024
BroadwayWorld, “Plunderer: The Life and Times of a Nazi Art Thief to Air in PBS,” by A.A. Cristi, January 16, 2025
World Screen, “PBS Lines Up Nazi Art Thief Doc Series,” by Jamie Stalcup, January 17, 2025
Media Play News, “Secrets of the Dead’ Doc ‘Plunderer: The Life and Times of a Nazi Art Thief’ Debuts Feb. 19 on PBS,” by Stephanie Prange, January 30, 2025
The Art Newspaper, “A looter evades justice, a victim searches for art: new films explore Nazi looting,” by Catherine Hickley, February 18, 2025
The Times of Israel, “Unrepentant Nazi art thief who stole Jews’ art from ‘still warm walls’ focus of new film,” by Rich Tenorio, February 19, 2025
Good Day New York, Fox 5, February 19, 2025.
Moment Magazine, “‘Plunderer: The Life and Times of a Nazi Art Thief,’ Interview with Jonathan Petropoulos, Hugo Macgregor, John S. Friedman and Diane M. Bolz,” February 20, 2025