Inside ‘Stealing Magic,’ the Tribeca Doc About a High-Stakes Cyberheist

The premise of one of the most compelling films at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival sounds more like a high-stakes thriller than a real-life documentary. When a group of anonymous online thieves begins stealing highly coveted magic tricks, two illusionists travel the globe, putting their lives and careers on the line to expose the culprits. Imagine The Bourne Identity as directed by Penn and Teller, and you will begin to grasp the intensity of Stealing Magic, a mysterious, sometimes absurd, and often deadly serious look at a hidden industry.

The story centers on Andi Gladwin, a magician who also operates a platform selling original magic tricks created by his peers. His world is upended when he discovers these exact routines being sold on a bootleg website for a fraction of the cost. For many in this insular community, the impact is devastating; some magicians have been forced to abandon their careers entirely because they can no longer afford to sell their work, especially given the immense time and effort required to develop new illusions.

“The average creator may only really make two or three thousand dollars per trick, and bear in mind those tricks typically take a good few years to create,” Gladwin explains in an exclusive clip from the film. “There really isn’t that much money in it, and I think that’s why most creators do it for the love of it.”

Gladwin and fellow magician George Luck recount their initial attempts to contact the bootleg site owners, hoping to resolve the issue diplomatically. The response they received, however, was chilling. According to Luck, the site owners demanded $25,000 a month in bitcoin, a form of extortion that highlighted the scale of the operation. “This was scary,” Luck notes, “because maybe that’s how much money they’re making from our products every single month.”

Directed by Matthew Testa, the film masterfully blends the suspense of a cyberheist with an incisive portrait of Gladwin. His near-pathological obsession with unmasking the thieves walks a razor-thin line between noble defense of his craft and potentially life-threatening danger. As Gladwin emphasizes, the stakes for the tight-knit community are existential: “The whole future of magic is definitely at stake because of piracy.”