Benedict Cumberbatch portrays Vincent Van Gogh to perfection in this powerful and critically acclaimed docudrama. Based on years of painstaking research, with every single word of dialogue sourced from his original writings, this is the artist's story, in his own words. For 18 years from 1872, Van Gogh chronicled his eventful life through some 900 letters to his younger brother Theo. The correspondence documents in vivid detail his travels and various occupations in the Netherlands, Belgium, England and France; his obsessive religious zeal; his artistic calling; the evolution of his skills; the way he used art and literature to discover and define himself; and the periods of mental instability and depression that plagued him during the years preceding his suicide. Now, this film weaves together the painter's recorded experiences into a compelling story. What emerges is a complex portrait of a sophisticated, civilized and yet tormented man.