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Michael Pitt, Imogen Poots, Isabelle Huppert and Willem Dafoe will star in writer/director Frank Hudec’s “The Sleeping Shepherd”.
In the film, Pitt plays Alex, a failed painter who decided he would rather steal great art than paint it. As he criss-crosses Europe, he meets a bored rich girl, Karoline (Poots), who gets a sexual thrill from art theft. Their Bonnie and Clyde escapade is cut short when Alex’s arrogance leads to his capture. In an effort to save him, his co-dependent mother (Huppert) destroys two billion-dollars worth of irreplaceable masterpieces by chopping them up and tossing them into the nearby Rhine Canal. Alex and his mother are sent to jail, but in a strange twist of irony, Alex’s jailhouse paintings become collector’s items.
The film is inspired by the true life story of the world’s most notorious art thief, Stéphane Breitwieser. Breitwieser admitted to stealing 239 works of art from 172 museums and exhibits across Europe beginning in 1995 until he was caught in 2001.
