Ontario Provincial Police order documentary filmmaker to turn over footage

Ontario Provincial Police obtained a court order to force filmmaker Jamie Kastner to provide complete raw footage of 17 interviews filmed for a TVO documentary about art forgery. 

Police asked Kastner for the footage; when he refused, they obtained a court order in November 2022, and Kastner was forced to hand it over in March 2023. The footage remained sealed as of July 6, 2023.

The footage includes interviews with people allegedly involved in producing, buying and selling fake paintings by Indigenous artist Norval Morrisseau. 

OPP and Thunder Bay police opened an investigation into the alleged forgery after the April 2019 release of Kastner’s film, “There Are No Fakes,” and have since arrested and charged eight people. “The officers say the Crown needs the footage to make the charges stick,” Kastner wrote in The Globe and Mail.