Film
Art and Craft
A documentary portrait of Mark Landis, a prolific art forger who spent decades creating museum-quality copies of masterworks and donating them to institutions nationwide—until an obsessive registrar noticed the pattern. It's a character study wrapped in a genuine mystery, funny and unsettling in equal measure, about compulsion, loneliness, and what we value in art.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you love character portraits of odd, obsessive people who turn out more tender than their quirks suggest, and you enjoy documentaries that let the subject talk rather than explain.
Skip it if you want a tightly plotted investigation with a clear arc; this is loose and conversational, and its moral questions are raised more than resolved.
What it asks of you: It runs about ninety minutes at an unhurried pace, mostly sitting with people in small rooms, so it rewards patience more than momentum.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Fyre2019
A hypnotic documentary about elaborate deception and charismatic delusion. Like Art and Craft, it captures someone spinning an impossible fantasy and the moment the world catches up. Both find dark comedy in obsession.
But It's angrier and more caustic than Art and Craft. The subject is treated less sympathetically, which some find bracing and others find exhausting.
Tickled2016
Starts as a quirky rabbit hole about competitive tickling, becomes a genuinely unsettling investigation into obsession and hidden networks. The same escalating dread as watching Landis's world unravel, but from a different angle entirely.
But It gets darker and stranger than most people expect. If you want a cozy documentary, this isn't it—it's investigating something genuinely disturbing.
Capturing the Friedmans2003
A family documentary that quietly demolishes certainty. Like Art and Craft, it presents a character who might be sympathetic or monstrous depending on which angle you're looking from. Unsettling and brilliant.
But It's deliberately ambiguous in ways that frustrate some viewers. There's no clean resolution, and the film refuses to decide for you.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Art and Craft
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Exit Through the Gift Shop2010
Both are investigations of forgery and authenticity, but where Art and Craft is a character study, this is a philosophical prank about the art market itself.
Banksy's documentary about street art, commodification, and a forger-turned-entrepreneur. Both films investigate the same central question: what makes something authentic, and who decides? Both are ultimately about the value we assign to objects and the obsessions that drive people to create them.
But The final twist—whether Banksy orchestrated the whole thing—either elevates it or feels like a con. Some viewers find it clever; others find it exhausting and cynical.
More like this (8)
The Toys That Made Us2017
Each episode is a love letter to obsessive creators and the people who collected their work. The same reverence for the handmade object and the collector's impulse that drives Art and Craft, but celebratory rather than investigative.
But It's Netflix comfort viewing—safe and warm where Art and Craft is prickly. The tone is almost aggressively upbeat.
Anvil! The Story of Anvil2008
Documents a cult metal band's decades-long struggle for recognition with surprising tenderness. It shares Art and Craft's interest in people sustained by pure creative will, regardless of external validation or reward.
But The middle section drags. Not everything about their lives is as fascinating as their dedication, and the film doesn't quite hide that.
The Imposter2012
A man assumes a dead child's identity and infiltrates a grieving family. Like Art and Craft, it's about someone creating an elaborate alternate reality and the moment verification becomes impossible. Genuinely unsettling.
But It hinges on a twist that some find cheap, and the filmmaking is deliberately manipulative in ways that feel more calculated than authentic.
Last Chance U2016
Follows college football players with the same fly-on-the-wall intimacy Art and Craft brings to Landis. Both capture people whose entire world is built around a single obsessive system they can't escape.
But It's part of a larger series, so this entry point feels incomplete. The pacing is slow television, not propulsive documentary.
Catfish2010
An investigation into online deception and false identity that shares Art and Craft's fascination with why someone would construct an elaborate lie. Both are fundamentally about the gap between who we are and who we pretend to be.
But The central relationship feels exploitative in retrospect, and the film's sympathies are murky in ways that now read as uncomfortable rather than profound.
Gleason2016
A documentary about a former NFL player's descent into ALS, made with his family's permission. Like Art and Craft, it's interested in a specific human life in all its complexity, without easy sentiment.
But It's genuinely sad rather than darkly funny. If you're looking for Art and Craft's particular tone, this swings toward devastation instead.
Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter2014
Both center on a character whose obsession has completely reshaped their sense of what's real. But where Landis creates objects, she pursues a dream.
A quiet, deadpan film about a Japanese woman who believes a fictional treasure buried in Minnesota is real, and travels across the world to find it. Like Art and Craft, it's about someone whose interior world is so vivid they've become detached from consensus reality—but told with tenderness instead of investigation.
But It's slow, surreal, and doesn't operate according to normal narrative logic. It's also ultimately quite sad in a way that stays with you uncomfortably.
Synecdoche, New York2008
Both explore the same psychological territory—the artist who uses creation to avoid living—but Kaufman goes surreal and philosophical where Art and Craft stays grounded and investigative.
Charlie Kaufman's baroque fever dream about a theater director who builds an increasingly elaborate replica of New York inside a warehouse, losing himself in the project. Like Art and Craft, it's about someone whose compulsion to create a perfect copy becomes indistinguishable from their life, and the loneliness at the heart of that obsession.
But It's willfully obscure and difficult. If you want clarity, you won't find it. Some find it profound; others find it pretentious and impenetrable.
People
Cast
- Mark LandisSelf
- Lester SullivanSelf
- Irwin LakovSelf
- Matthew LeiningerSelf - registrar, Cincinnati Art Museum
- Mark TullosSelf - museum director, Hilliard Museum
- Jill ChanceySelf - curator, Lauren Rogers Museum of Art
- Ellen RuffinSelf - curator, De Grummond Collection
- Aaron CowanSelf - history professor, University of Cincinnati
- Patty HallSelf - Hattiesburg Arts Council
- Robert K. WittmanSelf - special agent, Art Crime Team, Federal Bureau of Investigation
- Donna EnglishSelf - Mark A. Landis' former caseworker
- John GasperSelf - associate editor and chief business commentator, Financial Times
Directing
- Jennifer GrausmanDirector
- Mark BeckerDirector
- Sam CullmanDirector
Production
- Bonni CohenExecutive Producer
- Carolyn HepburnExecutive Producer
- Christopher ClementsExecutive Producer
- Julie GoldmanExecutive Producer
- Lisa Kleiner-ChanoffExecutive Producer
- Jennifer GrausmanProducer
- Sam CullmanProducer