My Kid Could Paint That

In 2004, four-year-old Marla Olmstead rocked the American art world when a series of her paintings, exhibited initially in a family friend's coffee house, drew comparisons with the work of Kandinsky, Pollack and even Picasso. The Marla story was taken up by the New York Times, launching a media explosion and attracting collectors willing to spend sizeable sums on these works from an inordinately gifted child. But a 60 Minutes programme raised doubts about the authenticity of the paintings, suggesting that she was at the very least being heavily directed by her father Mark, himself a keen amateur artist. As quickly as Marla had been celebrated, her parents were accused of exploiting their daughter for money and fame.

Over the course of a year, award-winning director Amir Bar-Lev grew close to the family and was inevitably forced to explore his own response to the debacle, but wisely leaves viewers to draw their own conclusions. His skilfully crafted film is so much more than a study of a possible child prodigy, drawing together its themes into an absorbing study of truth, parental responsibility, media exploitation and the value of art.