Misha Collins as Associate Producer

Directed By Darius Marder

Genre Documentary

MPAA rating N/A

Official Synopsis

Loot is a feature-length Documentary that follows two WWII veterans and their guide across the globe in search of their buried wartime treasures.

While stationed in Europe during WWII, Darrel looted 20 pounds of jewels. On the last day of the war he hid his loot in the attic of an Austrian farmhouse and returned to his home in Utah.

Fighting in the Pacific during WWII, Andy looted Samurai swords and jewels. Before returning to his home in Arizona, Andy buried his loot in the sands of the Philippines and drew a map in order to someday reclaim it.

Sixty years later, Andy and Darrel are in failing health when they meet Lance, a used-car salesman, inventor and amateur treasure hunter from Utah.

Darrel is a Mormon Bishop who lives a couple miles away from Lance in Provo, Utah. Lance and Darrel have been friends for five years, and in that time have been planning a trip back to Austria to retrieve the jewels Darrel stowed. In the summer of ‘05, with no picture of the house and only a blind man’s memory to guide them, Lance and Darrel set off for the town of Steyr, Austria.

Andy lives in a trailer on the border of Arizona and Nevada. He is a pack-rat, who, over the course of sixty years, has filled his life with everything from Elvis plates to weapons to pornography. Lance and Andy are prepared to travel to the Philippines, with the one hindrance being that Andy can’t find his map. Thus begins an exhaustive ten-month search, within which the buried secrets of Andy’s life rise to the surface.

Andy and Darrel become for Lance almost Dickensian ghost-like figures, warning him about his very nature and potential. In a poignant twist of fate, we learn that not only did Andy and Darrel both bury looted treasure as young soldiers, but both veterans lost their 19 year-old sons to drug overdoses decades ago. These personal histories serve as ominous warnings for Lance, the treasure hunter, who’s 19 year-old son is battling addiction in the present.

Loot is not a reality show built on contrived relationships or circumstances. An absurd lack of forethought combined with faith and naiveté allows for life’s magic to unfold in this surprisingly layered story. No producer cast two blind veterans as characters in Lance’s life, or spun the coincidence of the 19 year-old sons, nor did they seek out a former SS soldier to find Darrel in Austria. This is simply the way it happened.

Over the course of three years and three continents, these three characters move toward a common goal and come unwittingly to a place where they must choose to face a truth or bury it forever.