Following his breakthrough feature, SECRETARY, director Steven Shainberg creates a mesmerizing portrait of the visionary artist Diane Arbus in his new film, FUR: AN IMAGINARY PORTRAIT OF DIANE ARBUS. Much as an actual Arbus photo transports us into strange and unfamiliar worlds, FUR travels through the looking glass to explore the transformation of a shy woman into a powerfully original artist. Oscar® winner Nicole Kidman stars as "Diane Arbus," a devoted wife and mother whose innate talents and dark obsessions are profoundly at odds with the conventional life she leads in 1958 New York. Oscar®-nominee Robert Downey Jr. co-stars as Lionel, an enigmatic new neighbor who launches Diane on her journey to becoming the artist she is meant to be.

Well before Arbus was a legend, Steven Shainberg was growing up in a New York City townhouse lined with her photos. Shainberg knew these unusual photos in his childhood home as simply the work of his uncle’s friend. "I never met Diane. But she was very much a part of my parents’ adult world ‘out there’; it was very mysterious and intriguing. The images themselves I think were a fundamental part of my visual upbringing. In the same way that someone’s parents might read Dr. Seuss to them every night, I would walk up to my room and pass a picture of the Jewish Giant!" In creating his imaginary portrait of this great American photographer, Shainberg has made a film that, like the work and the artist it celebrates, is both daring and mysterious.