“In 2006, a group of men entered a bank in Buenos Aires, took 23 hostages, stole $19 million, jewelry from safes, and fled. After the escape, the ex-wife of one of the thieves betrayed the perpetrators, who were tried and sentenced to prison terms. Finally the sentences were reduced and today they are free. How did the protagonists of this event get away with it?” reads the synopsis of the documentary Los Ladrones: la verdadera historia del robo del siglo (The Thieves: The true story of the Robbery of the Century).

This Netflix production recreates the scenes of how the criminals planned, step-by-step, the assault on the branch of the Río de Acassuso Bank and stole $19 million.

The novelty of this documentary fis that it will feature testimonies from the real authors of this millionaire coup, who recount how they came to carry out the most famous bank robbery in Argentina and throughout Latin America. In the interviews, the former criminals delve into the facts, but also explain what led them to commit the heist 16 years ago.

“Using weapons was not in my style of what I was trying to find: artistic theft. We created the Donatello Plan, not by the artist, but by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They were in the drains, they did martial arts and they were green like cannabis,” says Fernando Araujo, the thief known as 'the artist,' in the 109-minute feature film. “They ask me, did you steal? No, I worked, I took it as a job,” says Sebastián García Bolster.

The story is told also including the bank guards, the police and the hostages who were victims of the robbery on that fateful day.

The documentary is directed by Matías Gueilburt and produced by Sebastián Gamba and Julian Rousso, who worked together before on the sports documentary, Vilas: You Will Be What You Should Be Or You Will Be Nothing, and the docuseries, The Days of Ayotzinapa; both available on Netflix.

The Thieves: The True Story of The Heist of the Century will be available worldwide starting Aug. 10.

This is not the first production to bring this true story to the screen. There has also been a feature film, El robo del siglo (The Heist of the Century), starring Guillermo Francella, Diego Peretti, Luis Luque, Pablo Rago, Rafael Ferro, and Mariano Argento. The film is directed by Ariel Winograd, and was released in 2020.