Amid the rise of the far-right in Germany, as the spoils of post-WW2 collections hit the world art market afresh, lawyers, curators,
politicians, and Jewish groups the world round are duking it out, painting by painting, sketch by sketch, over questions of ownership, history, and morality.

A series of failed attempts by the city of Düsseldorf to honour German-Jewish art dealer Max Stern, who barely escaped the war, settled in Montreal and became Canada’s most successful art dealer, cuts to the heart of the current crisis in Germany and the art world beyond around the restitution of Nazi-looted art.

Through a combination of exclusive interviews, actuality captured over a four-year period, and a gold-mine of rarely seen stock footage, THE SPOILS traces the betimes tragic, often irony-laced strokes in this ongoing battle.

This screening will be followed by a Q&A hosted by Globe and Mail columnist Marsha Lederman and historian Dr. Sharon Meen.

Saturday, May 3
Doors 1:30 pm | Event 2:00 pm *Start time subject to change. Please arrive on time.

Dr. Sharon Meen is a historian of German and Canadian history and has been a professor, lecturer and researcher at UBC for some decades. She served as the historical consultant for the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre's exhibit, Treasured Belonging: The Hahn Family & the Search for a Stolen Legacy and is the lead researcher on the Hahn family collection, a position which included documenting the efforts to trace and restitute the art objects from Max Hahn’s spectacular collection of art and Judaica. As a result, Sharon established contact with some of the organizations and individuals involved with tracing stolen art objects in Germany and became very well informed about the whole art-restitution process.

THE SPOILS (Jamie Kastner, 2025 / 104 mins / NR) A richly ironic tale framed by Germany’s botched recent attempts to honour Jewish art dealer Max Stern, exposes the still-raging battle over the restitution of Nazi-looted art.