Can a painting be the last prisoner of war? That question ripples throughout The Spoils, the new documentary from director Jamie Kastner (Nobody Wants to Talk About Jacob Applebaum, There Are No Fakes). The Spoils considers the question of restitution as it examines the case of Jewish artworks stolen by the Nazis during World War II. POV has a first look of the trailer for The Spoils ahead of its release in select theatres on April 4.
The film examines the case of a delayed 2018 art exhibition that was supposed to honour Jewish art deal Max Stern at the Düsseldorf City Museum. In 2021, the exhibition was hastily assembled following the cancellation of a 2017 show and intended to feature some artworks that Stern was forced to sell on the cheap as he escaped the Nazis. Stern later resettled in Montreal where he became a prominent art dealer. Through his success and hard work, he was able to recover some of his lost paintings, but not all of them.
“Across all the disputes, there’s a familiar pattern: politicians and museum officials, having ignored the claim as long as possible, finally start making noises about ‘doing the right thing,’” Kastner said in an interview with The Guardian. “But inevitably, things get gummed up in endless legal, scholarly or ‘scientific’ wranglings that drag on and on.”
The Spoils asks what it means for a cultural institution to house and celebrate artworks stolen amid the devastation and persecution of a people, and how people can heal by having these prisoners of war released and returned to their rightful owners. The Spoils is produced by Kastner and Laura Baron Kastner, and will be distributed in Canada by Vortex Media.
