“Visually expansive, emotionally intimate.” (Village Voice)

Brooklyn-born and raised in Brownsville, Texas, Julian Schnabel made his career in New York where he rose to superstar status in the 1980s with large-scale paintings composed of sculptural materials like plaster, wood, antlers, velvet, and—most famously—broken plates. He made his first film in 1995, about fellow painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, and has since directed the award winning Before Night Falls (2000), The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007), and two more features. Julian Schnabel: A Private Portrait captures the artist’s full-throttle approach to work and play, which extends to his life divided among trips abroad, a home in Montauk, and a 170-foot pink Venetian-style palazzo in Manhattan’s West Village. Home movies and other footage from Schnabel’s personal archives along with interviews from an extensive circle of friends, family, and colleagues including Mary Boone, Jeff Koons, Bono, and Laurie Anderson, open the window wide on this larger-than-life figure.