‘Forge’ Review: A Game of Cat-and-Mouse in the Miami Art World Makes for a Thrilling Directorial Debut

Editor’s note: This review was originally published during the 2025 SXSW Film and TV Festival. Utopia’s Circle Collective will open “Forge” with week-long theatrical runs in Los Angeles beginning May 15 at the Landmark Nuart Theatre, followed by New York beginning May 22 at Quad Cinema, with additional select markets rolling out nationwide in the weeks ahead.

To most of us, a phrase like “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” is little more than a platitude. To Coco Zhang, it’s an ethos that’s worth building an entire creative existence around. 

The Miami-based painter, played by Andie Ju in Jing Ai Ng’s first feature “Forge,” is the queen of fine art forgeries — just don’t call them “fakes.” The difference between the two is vast: fakes are simple reproductions of existing paintings, whereas forgeries are new works of art inspired by a famous artist, designed to appear like like the newly-discovered works of a master. In her eyes, it takes real love to make a convincing forgery. You have to understand every step of an artist’s process at a fundamental level, from the way they held their brushes to the traumatic experiences that shaped their worldviews. To her, forging an artist is an act of resurrection that brings a dead genius back to life for a few fleeting moments.

Spending six figures on an investment piece only to find out that it’s a worthless canvas made in some Zoomer’s garage is the kind of thing that can radicalize a loaded Miami socialite. String enough of those together, and you’ll have the art crimes division of the FBI crawling up your ass. 

When Ng’s thrilling directorial debut begins, Coco is on the cusp of both life-changing money and life-ending legal consequences. Her reputation is growing in the right corners of Miami’s underground art scene, and the illicit sales she makes through a man known only as “Pedro” keep growing. She’s ready to expand her crime empire for reasons both financial and egotistical — she likes the money, but what she really wants is the rush of placing a forgery in a museum. 

The market for her talents is there, but her ambitions are thwarted by her brother and business partner Raymond, whose pragmatism leads him to spend more time weighing risks than daydreaming about rewards. When he’s approached by billionaire fuckup Holden Beaumont (Edmund Donovan) about taking on a job that would require hundreds of fake paintings, his knee-jerk response is a resounding “No.” But with Holden desperately in need of assistance and Coco craving a partner whose ambition matches hers, it isn’t long before the three are in business.

Reeling from an ill-advised business venture that saw him launch a less successful version of Fyre Fest, Holden is looking to recreate his late grandfather’s massive art collection that was destroyed in a hurricane. Coco needs to recreate hundreds of old landscapes and portraits of dead presidents, then Holden and his savvy trophy wife Talia (Eva De Dominici) have to slowly sell them two and three at a time to local art dealers to avoid flooding the market and raising eyebrows.

The problem is that Coco has to manage the job while also working at her family’s Chinese restaurant, where her mother is always berating her for lacking the ambition of her banker brother. (It should be noted that Raymond does not actually work at a bank, but lies and tells his family he does while he serves poolside drinks at a hotel.) On New Year’s Eve, they’re joined by a new customer named Emily (Kelly Marie Tran), a lonely FBI agent seeking a bit of Chinese community after her colleagues don’t take her work in the Art Crimes division as seriously as their drug busts. She becomes fast friends with Coco’s mother, and the restaurant becomes her preferred spot for mulling over the case of the art forger that’s taking Miami by storm (and cooking her dumplings).

In a world where so many crime movies (understandably) focus on protagonists pushed to their limits by dire financial circumstances and forced to do things they initially don’t believe in, “Forge” is refreshing in how committed Coco is to the art of forgeries. It has all the neon, sunsets, and club music you’d expect from a thriller set in the wealthiest echelons of Miami, but the film doubles as a portrait of an artist who craves recognition for her work even more than she craves money.

Her desires elegantly clash with those of everyone around her thanks to the excellent work of the ensemble cast, who each embody a character chasing a different segment of the American dream. Raymond is a materialist who craves the wealth and status symbols that make you somebody in Miami. Holden already has them thanks to his family wealth, but craves the validation of the business community for creating something of his own. Emily has spent her entire life doing the right thing at every opportunity, and doesn’t care about fame or fortune, but just wants the human connection that comes from forming a few genuinely close relationships. And Coco wants to be seen as a lauded artist deserving of the same respect she gives to her dead heroes, even though there’s no amount of artistic fame that would earn the approval of her mother.

The tightly crafted story ensures that everyone is running a different race as the characters sprint to the finish line, leading to a deliberately unsatisfying ending that reflects those divergent goals. One of the more entertaining films of this years’ SXSW, “Forge” might end up bringing its director into the same spotlight that Coco wanted so badly.

Grade: B+

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