Ree began making films at the age of eleven[2] and studied journalism at Oslo Metropolitan University.[3] After his studies Ree worked as a freelance videojournalist for BBC and Reuters,[4] most notably covering the 2011 Norway attacks.[5] Ree has said in interviews that making his first feature Magnus was his film school: "There I understood that I could transfer the interviews to a universal, nonverbal cinematic language."[2]
His second feature film, The Painter and the Thief (2020), was one of the opening films at Sundance Film Festival[14] where it won a Special Jury Award for Creative Storytelling.[15][14] The film tells the story of an artist who befriends the thief who stole two of her paintings.[16]NEON bought the world rights to the film after the Sundance Film Festival premiere.[17] It received overall positive reviews, averaging 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 112 reviews.[18]
The storytelling style of The Painter and the Thief has been met with some criticism. The Painter and the Thief jumps back and forth in time, which is unusual for a documentary using the Cinéma vérité technique. This storytelling style was criticized by some reviewers for weakening the trust between filmmaker and viewer. The A.V. Club wrote that "by scrambling his film’s chronology in ways that threaten to rupture any sense of trust between director and viewer."[19]
The film has been named by Mubi as one of the best in film history,[20] by New York (magazine) to have one of the best movie endings in movie history[21] and as a film that has helped change the documentary film genre.[22][23]Vanity Fair placed The Painter and the Thief at the top of documentaries that were changing the genre.[24]
His third documentary feature film, Ibelin, premiered in competition at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the World Documentary Directing Award and the Audience Award.[34] It was picked up for distribution by Netflix.[1]
The film documents the life of "Mats Steen, a Norwegian gamer who died of a degenerative muscular disease at the age of 25".[35] The title comes from the name of a character in World of Warcraft.[36]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 100% of 20 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.2/10. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 72 out of 100, based on nine critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Variety praised the film, stating "It’s a world unto itself, and a glowing example of how moviemaking — like a person’s digital footprint — can be a form of immortality that soothes even the most devastating loss." and calling it "[...]a moving, multifaceted masterwork"[37]
Other projects
Ree researched and directed the TV documentary series Conversion Therapy with Morten Hegseth (2019) which uncovers how religious groups are offering Conversion Therapy for gay people in Norway.[38] In the aftermath of the series, the Prime Minister of Norway Erna Solberg said that she would stop the practice of conversion therapy in Norway: "We have to ensure that the abuses we have seen documented by VG do not happen in the future", she said.[39][40]
