Exit Through the Gift Shop

Thierry Guetta, a French shopkeeper in Los Angeles, obsessively filmed everything—especially the underground world of street artists he spent years tracking down.

After documenting dozens of street artists across the world, he finally tracked down the elusive Banksy himself, accumulating thousands of hours of footage with no real plan for what to do with it. When Guetta finally assembled a documentary, Banksy called it unwatchable. So Banksy took over the project, turned the camera on Guetta, and encouraged him to reinvent himself as street artist Mr. Brainwash.

To this day, debates rage about whether the film is real or an elaborate hoax. Either way, it raises uncomfortable questions about what makes art valuable.