Auction

Auction (Le Tableau volé, 2024) is a French comedy-drama you can watch online on iFILM. A Paris auction-house specialist opens an odd letter: in the working-class town of Mulhouse, supposedly, an Egon Schiele lost since 1939 is hanging on someone's living-room wall. André drives out certain it is a hoax — and runs straight into the real thing.

The painting, Wilted Sunflowers, was seized by the Nazis, and today it is worth a fortune. The catch: its owner is a young factory worker who has no idea what he inherited. Alex Lutz plays André as a man caught between the auctioneer's thrill of the find and a nagging conscience — whose picture is it, really, and how much of the truth does he owe? Director Pascal Bonitzer skips the thriller route for something sharper: a very Parisian satire of the art world, where dealers, heirs and restorers circle the canvas like it is prey.

Léa Drucker plays his ex-wife and professional rival, and their barbed exchanges keep the film humming as much as the plot does. It premiered in Venice, and it is exactly the kind of light, talky European film about money and art that goes down easy on a weeknight. If you like the witty, dialogue-driven French school, settle in. Stream Auction (2024) online on iFILM.