Denial: Hilary Swank and Tom Wilkinson to star in film about Holocaust denier David Irving
Irving filed an unsuccessful libel suit against historian Deborah Lipstadt in 1996
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Your support makes all the difference.Hilary Swank is set to lead new film drama Denial, based on Deborah Lipstadt’s book History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier.
The Oscar-winning actress will play US historian Lipstadt, who famously battled Holocaust denier David Irving in court after he sued both her and Penguin Books for libel.
The story follows Lipstadt and her lawyers’ fight to prove that the Holocaust happened and Irving had tried to erase history by deliberately manipulating evidence “for his own ideological reasons”.
Tom Wilkinson, known recently for Selma, is attached to star as Irving, whose case was ultimately unsuccessful and discredited him as a Nazi Germany expert.
Mick Jackson is on board to direct, Oscar-nominated David Hare is penning the screenplay and Gary Foster and Russ Krasnoff will produce, Deadline reports.
“This is a powerful story about the legal and personal battle Deborah Lipstadt fought to defend the veracity of historical facts,” the producers said.
“No one has the right to erase history by distorting the truth and David Hare’s brilliant script weaves a relevant and thrilling journey.”
Swank was last seen on the silver screen starring alongside Tommy Lee Jones in The Homesman while Wilkinson is busy filming his role as Guardian journalist Ewen MacAskill in Oliver Stone’s Snowden, about the former CIA employee who leaked classified US documents to the press.
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