Film about Dutch museum $100 million heist in the works

PanARMENIAN.Net - One of the art world's most dramatic heists, the theft of seven masterpieces worth more than $100 million from a Dutch museum last year, will be made into a movie by Romanian producer-director Tudor Giurgiu, The Hollywood Reporter said.

The crime at Rotterdam's Kunsthal Museum on Oct. 16 2012 shocked the art world.

Security footage released later by police showed six hooded and masked men slipping into the museum through a rear door and, in less than three minutes, making off with seven paintings by artists including Pablo Picasso, Henri Mattise, Claude Monet and Paul Gauguin.

The daring raid lead to speculation that the men were professionals stealing the masterpieces to repay a debt or ransom the paintings, all of which are so famous they couldn't be sold on the open market.

The truth was more prosaic: The men were from a small Romanian village, and it is believed that some of the works of art may have since been destroyed.

Giurgiu, whose second feature Of Snails and Men was based on another true story -- the privatization of a Romanian car factory that is turned into a snail cannery -- is working with photographer Cristian Movila to develop the art heist story for the big screen.

Movila's photographs illustrated a New York Times story in July, A Trail of Masterpieces and a Web of Lies, Leading to Anguish by Andrew Higgins, which outlined the extraordinary story of the theft.