Denial

Rachel Weisz and Timothy Spall star in this riveting, true-life procedural drama about the courtroom showdown between Jewish historian Deborah Lipstadt and notorious Holocaust denier David Irving.

In the 1990s, an impassioned and articulate American Professor, Deborah Lipstadt (Weisz) published a book - Denying The Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory - in part as a response to David Irving (Spall), once a well-regarded military historian, who had courted controversy when he began citing the pseudoscientific Leuchter report as proof that the Holocaust was a hoax. When Lipstadt explicitly labelled Irving a Holocaust denier in her book, he subsequently sued her for libel. But since the burden of proof in English libel law lies with the accused, it fell to Lipstadt and her legal team to demonstrate that one of the defining events of the century did indeed transpire, so as to discredit Irving and clear her name.

Powered by its two terrific central performances - with Spall’s Irving a poisonous mix of insecurity and bravado; and Weisz’s nuanced turn as the impassioned Lipstadt, who finds herself representing an entire people in her quest to prove the truth – Denial is a prescient tale of doubt and prejudice, and a gripping reminder that history should never be taken for granted.

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