It all started with a watch, or more precisely, with over 106 rare European timepieces. One piece alone, made especially for ill-fated French queen Marie Antoinette, was valued at a whopping $30 million. On a quiet Friday evening in 1983, the collection disappeared from Jerusalem’s Museum of Islamic Art. It wasn’t seen again for a quarter of a century. The biggest art theft in Israel’s history left the police scratching their heads. When the timepieces gradually resurfaced a quarter of a century later, the enigmatic thief was dead and his widow Nili Shamrat from LA tells for the first time, director Nili Tal his and her story. Among policemen, lawyers and curators.
This collection of clocks, most of which were eventually recovered, is well worth a visit. It was donated to the museum by the family of Sir David Salomon and it included many famous works by 18th-century clockmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet, among them a self-winding timepiece made for Queen Marie-Antoinette. The entire collection is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
If you ever needed proof that truth is stranger than fiction, look no further than the story of Na’aman Diller, the thief who pulled off the robbery, which is told mainly through reminiscences of his widow, Nili Shomrat, who is now a yoga and Hebrew teacher in Los Angeles. Diller was a brilliant thief, robbing people on the kibbutz where he grew up and eventually carrying out daring bank robberies in Tel Aviv.
Shomrat, who had a whirlwind romance with him in the early 70s, eventually left for the US, getting back together with Diller many years later, after he pulled off the clock heist and then things really got weird. Someone will eventually turn this into a feature film but no fictional drama could be crazier than the real story.
Sponsored by Jane & John Sprung
It is with great sadness we announce the passing of Nili Tal the Director of My Lover The Clock Thief - she passed shortly after having our Q&A
- Year2023
- Runtime100 minutes
- LanguageEnglish, Hebrew
- CountryIsrael
- PremiereUS
- Subtitle LanguageEnglish
- DirectorNili Tal
- ScreenwriterNili Tal
- ProducerNili Tal
- CastNaaman DillerNilli Shomrat
It all started with a watch, or more precisely, with over 106 rare European timepieces. One piece alone, made especially for ill-fated French queen Marie Antoinette, was valued at a whopping $30 million. On a quiet Friday evening in 1983, the collection disappeared from Jerusalem’s Museum of Islamic Art. It wasn’t seen again for a quarter of a century. The biggest art theft in Israel’s history left the police scratching their heads. When the timepieces gradually resurfaced a quarter of a century later, the enigmatic thief was dead and his widow Nili Shamrat from LA tells for the first time, director Nili Tal his and her story. Among policemen, lawyers and curators.
This collection of clocks, most of which were eventually recovered, is well worth a visit. It was donated to the museum by the family of Sir David Salomon and it included many famous works by 18th-century clockmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet, among them a self-winding timepiece made for Queen Marie-Antoinette. The entire collection is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
If you ever needed proof that truth is stranger than fiction, look no further than the story of Na’aman Diller, the thief who pulled off the robbery, which is told mainly through reminiscences of his widow, Nili Shomrat, who is now a yoga and Hebrew teacher in Los Angeles. Diller was a brilliant thief, robbing people on the kibbutz where he grew up and eventually carrying out daring bank robberies in Tel Aviv.
Shomrat, who had a whirlwind romance with him in the early 70s, eventually left for the US, getting back together with Diller many years later, after he pulled off the clock heist and then things really got weird. Someone will eventually turn this into a feature film but no fictional drama could be crazier than the real story.
Sponsored by Jane & John Sprung
It is with great sadness we announce the passing of Nili Tal the Director of My Lover The Clock Thief - she passed shortly after having our Q&A
- Year2023
- Runtime100 minutes
- LanguageEnglish, Hebrew
- CountryIsrael
- PremiereUS
- Subtitle LanguageEnglish
- DirectorNili Tal
- ScreenwriterNili Tal
- ProducerNili Tal
- CastNaaman DillerNilli Shomrat
