Denial tells the true story behind one of the most gripping court cases of the twentieth century. The film recounts Prof. Deborah E. Lipstadt’s legal battle for historical truth against controversial historian David Irving who accused her of libel when she declared him a Holocaust denier. In the English legal system, in cases of libel, the burden of proof falls on the defendant, and therefore, it was up to Lipstadt and her legal team to prove that the Holocaust did actually happen.
Featuring Rachel Weisz as the brash, loquacious, and fiercely intellectual Lipstadt, Timothy Spall as the quintessentially evil David Irving, and Tom Wilkinson as the quietly commanding barrister Richard Rampton, Denial is a powerful cinematic reminder of how history is shaped. “I’d like people to understand that the Holocaust is the best documented genocide in the world. There is no denying it. You can debate aspects of it – why it happened, how it happened, but not the fact that it happened…. And that’s not being closed-minded, it’s acknowledging the truth” (Deborah E. Lipstadt).
