The trailer for Woman in Gold starring Academy Award winner Helen Mirren has debuted. We couldn’t be more excited.
This past April, artnet News reported that Maria Altmann (née Maria Victoria Bloch), a Jewish refugee who was forced to flee her hometown of Vienna during World War II, was to be the subject of a new film directed by Simon Curtis. (See “Weinsteins’ Nazi-Looted Klimt Restitution Film To Star Helen Mirren.”)
In the trailer, Altmann, played by Mirren, returns to Vienna decades after the outbreak of war determined to salvage memories from her past. Partnering with an inexperienced lawyer, E. Randol Schoenberg, played by a nerdy looking Ryan Reynolds, Altmann embarks on a mission to reclaim a famous family heirloom, a portrait of her aunt Adele—Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907)—known as “the Mona Lisa of Austria.” The few Klimt paintings owned by Maria’s uncle, a Czech sugar magnate, were confiscated by the Nazis in Vienna prior to the war.
The almost decade-long legal battle ultimately ends up in the U.S. Supreme Court and although this film focuses on the specific portrait, Altmann also successfully wins her legal campaign against the Government of Austria for four other Klimt paintings—one of which is now on view at the MoMA.
Watch the trailer below and head to theaters April 3, 2015.
