''Magnus'' is a 2016 documentary film by

Benjamin Ree Benjamin Ree (born July 10, 1989) is a Norwegian director and cinematographer of several documentaries, including ''Magnus'' (2016), '' The Painter and the Thief'' (2020), and the Peabody Award winning ''The Remarkable Life of Ibelin'' (2024). ...

about the early life of Norwegian

chess Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...

prodigy

Magnus Carlsen Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen (born 30 November 1990) is a Norwegian Grandmaster (chess), chess grandmaster. Carlsen is a five-time World Chess Championship, World Chess Champion, five-time World Rapid Chess Championship, World Rapid Chess Champio ...

, him becoming a Grandmaster at age 13 and winning the

FIDE The International Chess Federation or World Chess Federation, commonly referred to by its French acronym FIDE ( , ), is an international organization based in Switzerland that connects the various national chess federations and acts as the Spor ...

World Chess Championship in 2013. The film premiered at

Tribeca Film Festival The Tribeca Festival is an annual film festival organized by Tribeca Enterprises. It takes place each spring in New York City, showcasing a diverse selection of film, episodic, talks, music, games, art, and immersive programming. The festival ...

in 2016, and was sold to 64 countries.

Premiere

''Magnus'' premiered at

in 2016. and became the first Norwegian feature documentary to have its world premiere at the festival.

did not attend the premiere of the film, but his family was present. The film became the fastest sold out film at the festival that year, and the artistic director at

Frederic Boyer said the film was one of his favorites that year.

Critical reception

''Magnus'' received mostly positive reviews from film critics. It holds an 81% approval rating on review aggregator website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

, based on 21 reviews, with a

weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...

of 6.2/10. BBC put the film on its top 10 list, November 2016, as the only documentary on the list, calling the film: "an intimate look Carlsen’s extraordinary life through archive footage, home movies and interviews." Later BBC published a behind the scenes featurette about the film, showing a clip of

playing blindfolded chess against 10 lawyers at Harvard University, beating them all.

Notable awards

*''Global Future Prize'' – Oulu International Children's and Youth Film Festival. *''The Ray of Sunshine'' – The NorwegianFilm Festival. *''Audience Award'' – Docville

References

External links

* *Magnus o
Rotten TomatoesBBC Featurette
Films about chess 2016 documentary films 2016 films 2010s English-language films Magnus Carlsen 2016 in chess Films directed by Benjamin Ree English-language documentary films {{Bio-documentary-film-stub