Plunderer

Synopsis

Plunderer is a feature-length documentary that focuses on the career of Bruno Lohse, a Nazi art dealer who served as Göring’s art agent in Paris and headed the ERR, the Nazis’ clearinghouse for confiscated art in France. Captured and interrogated by the Monuments Men after the war, Lohse served a brief prison sentence. Following his release, he profitably dealt in stolen art for sixty years, selling to collectors, galleries, and major museums. The film includes stories of Holocaust survivors working to reclaim their families’ lost artworks and examines the continuity between the post-war era and the contemporary art world and its secretive culture.

About the Director

Hugo MacGregor
Director Hugo Macgregor has been shortlisted for a BAFTA and nominated numerous times for Grierson, Royal Television Society, and Emmy awards, as well as winning numerous other awards for his films. His films include the acclaimed BBC series The Romantics & Us; Simon Schama’s The Story of the Jews (“Over the Rainbow,” BBC/PBS); A House Through Time, (BBC); and Becoming Matisse (BBC2), which combined animation with testimony from the Matisse family to tell the story of Matisse’s early life.

About the Producer

John S. Friedman
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.

Artist Statement

There have been a number of films about the restitution of art stolen from Jewish families during the war. All of them have been told from the perspective of the victims. None have been told from the perspective of a perpetrator.
In this case, Dr Bruno Lohse, a young art historian and member of the SS, who was cherry-picked by Goering to be his ‘insider man’ in Paris during WW2, yet who escaped justice and reinvented himself to continue trading in looted art right up to his death in 2007.
What makes Lohse’s story unique is that it takes us way beyond wartime Paris deep into the post-war art world and beyond – to the exploitation of secrecy laws, to Swiss bank vaults and to shadowy Liechtenstein foundations, all of which have fostered the art trade – and its continued trade in looted art – from the late 1950s to the present day.
So, in the end, this is a morality tale (maybe even an immorality tale) that asks questions about the complicity not just of ex-Nazis like Dr Lohse, but also of the international art trade, which with its complete lack of regulation, is comparable only to those of weapons and drugs.

Festivals, Screenings, & Awards

– DOC NYC (2024) – World Premiere
– PBS (2025)