Amir Bar Lev, whose directorial debut, Fighter, was named one of the top documentaries of 2001 by Newsweek, Rolling Stone and The Village Voice, is an award-winning filmmaker specializing in nonfiction cinema. His filmography includes My Kid Could Paint That, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was bought by Sony Pictures Classics; and The Tillman Story, which was a Domestic Documentary Finalist at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and received a Special Jury Mention at Full Frame, a Silverdocs Special Jury Award and won the IFP Gotham Award. Bar Lev also co-produced the 2009 Academy Award nominated documentary Trouble the Water.

Bar Lev went to Binghamton, NY in the summer of 2004 intending to make a movie about Marla Olmstead, a four-year old child prodigy who was creating abstract paintings that drew comparisons to Jackson Pollock and Wasilly Kandinsky. But his movie turned into a family drama when 60 Minutes ran a segment suggesting that the paintings may not have been created by the girl herself.

The resulting film is an interesting and complex exploration of the issues of modern art, child prodigies, and media exploitation that will fascinate audiences on both big and small screens. However, it will leave art audiences quibbling that neither Bar Lev nor his expert witness (New York Times chief art critic Michael Kimmelman) really address some important questions.

Amir Bar Lev is a director of documentary films who has taught at NYU. His first feature, Fighter, a film about two Czech emigres, was the subject of a documentary competition at this year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, where Bar Lev is president of the jury. His other film, Happy Valley, follows the destruction of the bucolic image of Penn State in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child abuse scandal.    אמיר בר לב