Private International Law-Related Movies Worth Watching During the Holidays

The holiday season is approaching. Hopefully, that will mean that most of us can leave our keyboards to rest and not only catch up with family and friends, but also enjoy some good movies. And then why not movies on private international law themes?

Below is a short list of recommendations on three movies based on true private international law stories. To explain how the movies have to do with private international law, some spoilers are unavoidable. However, given that the three recommended movies all are based on true stories, this seems a tolerable risk.

Woman in Gold (2015)

The 2015 film Woman in Gold is based on the legal battle to recover Gustav Klimt’s 1907 masterpiece Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (also known as Woman in Gold), which was confiscated by the Nazis in Vienna and subsequently displayed at the Belvedere Museum.

The dramatization follows how the rightful heir of the painting Maria Altmann, in the 1990s, learned that Austria had amended its legislation to allow former owners or their heirs to seek restitution of Nazi-looted art. Upon discovering that claimants in Austria were required to provide procedural security calculated on the basis of the estimated value in dispute, the recovery strategy shifted towards litigation in the United States, raising fundamental questions of jurisdiction and sovereign immunity there.

The movie depicts the resulting landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Republic of Austria v. Altmann, 541 U.S. 677 (2004), in which the Court held that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act could be applied retroactively to determine jurisdiction over conduct occurring long before its enactment in 1976. Although jurisdiction was thus established in the United States, the substantive dispute was ultimately resolved through arbitration in Austria. Today, the painting is no longer displayed at the Belvedere in Vienna, but at the Neue Galerie in New York.

Woman in Gold is a fantastic movie that really highlights the relevance of private international law issues in establishing historical and moral justice. The movie is well-worth watching, not only for private international law academics, but also for people that are in to history or just appreciate a good story.

Denial (2016)

Irving v Penguin Books Ltd and Deborah E. Lipstat [2000] EWHC QB 115  is a judgment of the English High Court delivered on 11 April 2000 concerning Holocaust denier David Irving’s libel action against the historian Deborah Lipstadt. The proceedings arose from Lipstadt’s book, published in the United Kingdom by Penguin Books, in which Irving was described as a Holocaust denier and falsifier of historical evidence. The case was tried in London, and its factual and procedural development is closely followed in the 2016 movie Denial, which places particular emphasis on the defence’s legal and strategic choices.

The dispute contains a private international law dimension, insofar as the proceedings were brought in the United Kingdom rather than in the United States, where Lipstadt was domiciled and where substantially stronger free-speech protection applies. That dimension, however, is not a dominant theme in the film. Nevertheless, the case provides a clear illustration of the United Kingdom’s distinctive approach to the burden of proof in defamation proceedings, under which the defendant must establish the truth of the impugned statements. This allocation of the burden of proof has long been identified as a structural factor encouraging so-called “libel tourism”, namely the strategic selection of the English courts by claimants in defamation disputes with cross-border elements.

Loving (2016)

In the 1960s, interracial couples were prohibited from marrying in the U.S. state of Virginia. Because of this prohibition, Mr. and Mrs. Loving traveled to Washington, D.C., where they could legally marry. Upon returning to Virginia, they were arrested for cohabiting as a married couple and subsequently sentenced to imprisonment. A Virginia court suspended their sentence on the condition that they leave the state and not return together for a period of twenty-five years.

The couple initially complied with the judgment and relocated to Washington, D.C., where they were legally permitted to live together. A few years later, Mrs. Loving wrote to Robert F. Kennedy who referred their case to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). This initiated a legal challenge that ultimately culminated in the landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) which invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage.

Despite not being “international”, the movie illustrates the private international law issue of “limping marriages”. Parallels can easily be drawn to the contemporary situation with same-sex marriages in EU that are still not recognized in all EU member states.

Now It’s Your Turn, Readers!

The above list is, of course, far from exhaustive — and it is also heavily anglophone. Several other movies exist that tell stories somehow related with private international law. Not least have the connections between movies and private international law been explored in Spanish (see e.g. the 2017 Conflictoflaws.net post by Ralph Michaels with further references to the 2012 anthology El derecho internacional privado y el cine; see, as well, Alfonso Ortega Giménez’s 2023 book El derecho internacional privado a través del cine).

Readers wishing to recommend movies that raise questions of jurisdiction, applicable law, recognition, or cross-border legal conflict more broadly are warmly invited to share their suggestions by commenting on this post!