Hannah Arendt (2012) DVD

In this drama based on a true story, Barbara Sukowa stars as the German-American political theorist who caused a storm of controversy with her views on the trial of the Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann. Sent to Israel in 1961 to cover the trial for 'The New Yorker' magazine, Arendt (Sukawa), a Jew who fled Germany during Hitler's rise to power, provokes fury with her portrayals of both Eichmann and his captors, incurring the wrath of the Jewish world when she introduces her concept of 'the banality of evil', arguing that the great evils in history, and in particular the Holocaust, were not committed by monsters, but by ordinary people who were simply conditioned by the state. As she attempts to justify her stance, Arendt finds herself the centre of a political storm, whilst at the same time coming under increasing pressure from those closest to her.