When German police found more than one thousand bronze statues by artist Alberto Giacometti in a warehouse in Mainz in 2009, they had no idea they were walking into one of the largest art frauds ever committed on German grounds. For more than a decade, an unknown art gallery owner, a strange German count and a mysterious Dutch forger sold their fakes to auction houses, museums and institutions across Europe. With the dramaturgy of true crime mixed with the improbable situations brought by an improvised criminal gang, the series follows the investigations of Stuttgart police inspector Ernst Scholler to uncover the fraud. While Robert Driessen—the forger himself—takes us into the great Giacometti art scam and a life full of art fraud: deals with auction houses, collectors landing by helicopter on his garden, deliveries of hundreds of bronze statues on the German autobahn, his escape to Thailand, all the way to his arrest in 2015. A whimsical, unexpected, and larger than fiction crime series, yet it is all true…Aside from thousands of bronze statues.

Robert Driessen and the great Giacometti art fraud allows us to build a “true crime series” that mixes the dramaturgy and suspense of the hunt for the forger with tones close to films like “Ocean’s 11”. A strange and unimaginable gang of criminals gets deeper and deeper into trouble as the success of the Giacometti sales progresses. The film will balance the investigative tension of the discoveries by Police Inspector Scholler and investigative journalist Michael Sonntheimer, with the improbable situations in which Driessen and his gang find themselves all the way to the trial, where even the judge was quite amused by Robert’s testimony. While usual crime series follow heavy and bloody crimes, connected to loss and death, with Master Forger we dive into a different crime world: an astute yet improvised art dealer inventing the most improbable stories to sell their art, an art forger driving his bronzes back and forth on the German autobahn, a fake count pretending to be Giacometti’s last best friend…

Director of photography
Nikolaus Schlebruegge
Film Editor
Christian Timmann, Benedetta Marchiori
Cast and characters

Robert Driessen, Ernst Schoeller

Production Director
Zsofi Lili Kovac
Organizzatore generale
Antonietta Bruni
Executive production
Producer
Production
Unknown Media, Indyca
Con il sostegno di Film Commission Torino Piemonte - Piemonte Doc Film Fund - produzione dicembre 2024
Last update: 23 April 2025