German artist Gerhard Richter (born 1932), one of the world's greatest living painters, has spent over half a century experimenting with a tremendous range of techniques and ideas, addressing historical crises and mass-media representation alongside explorations of chance procedures. Infamously media-shy, he agreed to appear on camera for the first time in 15 years for a 2007 short by filmmaker Corinna Belz called Gerhard Richter's Window.

Her feature-length follow-up, Gerhard Richter Painting, is a thrilling document of Richter's creative process juxtaposed with intimate conversations (with his critics, his collaborators and his American gallerist Marian Goodman) and rare archive material. From a fly-on-the-wall perspective, the audience watches the 79-year-old Richter create a series of large-scale abstract canvases using fat brushes and a massive squeegee to apply (and then scrape off) layer after layer of brightly colored paint.