THE LOST LEONARDO

Director: Andreas Koefoed

U.S./Denmark, 100, PG-13

Screenwriter: Andreas Koefoed, Duska Zagorac and Andreas Dalsgaard.

Cast: With: Dianne Modestini, Jerry Saltz, Yves Bouvier, Robert Simon, Kenny Schachter, Alexander Parish.

 

The best mystery to date of 2021 is also its unlikeliest: A documentary by Danish director Andreas Koefoed on the discovery of a painting that the art world hopes is a missing masterpiece by Leonardo DaVinci. In 2005, two art dealers buy a painting at an auction and bring it to restorer Dianne Modestini. Beneath the layers of paint, she finds a portrait of Christ, with the same lips as the inscrutable Mona Lisa. Authenticated by London’s National Gallery and hung in the Louvre, it is an art lover’s dream come true…until skeptics begin to find clues that all is not as it seems…

“Sensational. The mystery of how in the viral global cosmos of the 21st century, the reality of an image — even if it’s a lie — will takes a transcendent life of its own.”- Owen Gleiberman, Variety. 100 min. A New York Times Critics Pick