Watch Helen Mirren in Woman in Gold trailer

Woman in Gold, the new film from My Week With Marilyn director Simon Curtis, is based on the true story of Jewish refugee Maria Altmann, and her long battle with the Austrian government to reclaim a painting that had belonged to her family before the war.

Synopsis: Having fled Vienna during World War II, an elderly Jewish woman, Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren), starts her journey to retrieve family possessions seized by the Nazis, among them Klimt’s famous painting ‘The Lady in Gold’. Together with her inexperienced but plucky young lawyer Randy Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds), she embarks upon a major battle which takes them all the way to the heart of the Austrian establishment and the U.S. Supreme Court, and forces her to confront difficult truths about the past along the way.

The film had it’s premiere at this year’s Berlinale where I managed to catch it, and instead of solely focusing on the battle to reclaim the artwork, it also interestingly includes flashbacks to Altmann (played brilliantly by Orphan Black star Tatiana Maslany in the days leading up to her escape from , that offer some context to the modern day events.