If you were at MAGIC Live last year, you heard Andi Gladwin talk about his elaborate, international efforts to track down the people involved in selling illicit magic tricks online. That quest has been made into an 88-minute documentary called Stealing Magic, which is set to premiere on June 5, 2026, at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City.
The documentary is directed by Matthew Testa, and features Gladwin as well as Joshua Jay, George Luck, and Penn & Teller. Randy Pitchford is one of the producers, along with Ethan Smith, Melanie Miller, and Diane Becker, and Genii Enterprises Executive Director Julie Eng was also interviewed for the project.
Testa, who has been working in documentary film for 25 years, became involved in the eighth year of Andi’s investigation after a mutual acquaintance connected him with Randy. “There was an opportunity to play in the true crime genre, but also do it with some levity and tell this fish out of water story of these magicians becoming citizen investigators to try to right this injustice in the magic world,” Testa told THE EYE.
Another universal theme of the documentary is how important it is to protect creative art forms, especially magic. “Magic asks so much of practitioners. It takes so much skill and so much practice and commitment,” Testa said. “I think art forms like that are particularly vulnerable to things like piracy, and I think also in a digital world, where it’s so easy now to be entertained without having to do any work, art forms that take a lot of work and a lot of effort are particularly vulnerable, and that really spoke to me about this story.”
And while Testa didn’t want to spoil what we’ll see in the documentary, he did offer a tease about what’s in store for viewers. “This film is a real investigative caper with twists and turns and red herrings and everything that you would want from a mystery story,” he said. “It’s a very gratifying, fast-moving, propulsive 85 to 90 minutes that goes in all kinds of unforeseen directions, the way you might expect any great mystery movie to go.”
In addition to the June 5 premiere, the documentary also has screenings at Tribeca on June 6 and June 7. Tickets to screenings were still available at the time this column went to print.
Stealing Magic will also be presented at DC/DOX’26 in Washington, D.C., on June 12.
Photos courtesy of Stealing Magic LLC