A grieving Black Jewish attorney in 1996 New York rediscovers her purpose when she takes on the Swiss banking system on behalf of Holocaust survivors — while the wartime journal of a young Austrian woman who collaborated with the Nazis to survive reveals the crimes the banks have spent decades burying.

SYNOPSIS:

In 1996 New York, Louise Harris, one of the finest financial litigators in the city is three drinks into her own anniversary party and doesn’t care who notices. Two years after the hate crime murder of her gay son, she has let her grief eat her firm alive. Twenty-nine of the last thirty cases lost. Staff walking out. Its reputation combusting. But when her partner Ivana forces a folder into her hands, something bigger emerges, and it might just save both her firm and her sanity.

Inside the file is Greta Beer, a woman who has spent fifty years being turned away by Swiss banks in search of her father’s wartime deposits. But not only her; two hundred people, then five hundred thousand, all with the same story. The Swiss banks took their money, erased their records and hid behind privacy laws written precisely to prevent them from ever having to give it back. Louise kicks into third gear with a class action lawsuit against three Swiss banks in the Eastern District of New York. The case will be called the Holocaust Victims Assets Litigation. And it will change history.

As luck would have it, a research graduate arrives at the firm carrying her grandmother Nina’s journal - a book that no one was ever supposed to read. Presently, Nina is a quiet, guilt-haunted woman living with the actions of her past. Back when she was twenty-one, she was the daughter of Austria’s central bank president. A position that, in one split second, would make her choose between her life or her people. This journal helps Louise break the case wide open.

What follows is the story of how wars are paid for. In 1939, Nina survived by making herself indispensable to Walther Funk - Hitler’s financial minister - as his mathematician, his right hand, but ultimately, his hostage. Every day was a confusing crusade for Nina as she helped to keep Germany’s army financed in exchange for her survival. As time went on and funds began to dwindle, Walther devised more and more inhumane ways to steal from her Jewish community, and Nina could do nothing but don a blonde wig and pretend to be German. Complicating everything was Gabriel Wetter - Switzerland's finance minister - present not as an enemy but as a business partner profiting from the arrangement. Swiss boardroom negotiations that converted stolen assets into Nazi weapons purchases; the fake identity of “Heinrick” used to drain fifty thousand bank accounts in a single month; the looted homes, forced business transfers and insurance policies made with no intention to claim later. Gabriel was a decent man; yes, he chose complicity, but their love for one another was what eventually drove Nina to betray the operation from the inside.

Both timelines converge on a single discovery - one man in Nina’s journal, Robert, was executed by the Nazis for loving another man. A hate crime Louise is only too familiar with. He also happens to be Louise’s uncle, and his unclaimed insurance policy paved the way for hundreds more to be found.

The film ends with Nina’s final testimony in Louise’s courtroom. The case was settled with 1.25 billion dollars owed to victims. It took the Swiss banks seven years to steal hundreds of millions of dollars. It took fifty to give it back.