This film is the remarkable true story of one woman’s journey to reclaim her heritage and seek justice for what happened to her family. Sixty years after she fled Vienna during WW2, an elderly Jewish woman, Marie Altmann, started her seven-year journey to retrieve family possessions seized by the Nazis; among them Gustav Klimt’s painting “The Woman in Gold,” a portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer 

In 1903, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer commissioned Gustav Klimt to paint a portrait of his wife. In December 1903, Klimt visited the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna for early-Christian Byzantine gold mosaics. Klimt undertook more extensive preparations for the portrait than any other piece he worked on. Much of the portrait required an elaborate technique of using gold and silver leaf and then adding decorative motifs. The frame for the painting, covered in gold leaf, was made by architect Josef Hoffmann. Klimt finished the work in 1907.

Adele Bloch-Bauer died in 1925. In her will, she designated the Woman in Gold and other artworks to go to the Osterreichische Galerie Belvedere in Vienna. Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer fled to Switzerland in 1938 due to increasing anti-Jewish persecution. Among other family assets, the Woman in Gold was stolen by Nazis in 1941and taken to the Galerie Belvedere. When Mr. Bloch-Bauer died in 1945, his will stated that the estate should go to his nephew and two nieces, including Maria Altmann. (Painting: Woman in Gold by Gustav Klimt)  DVD orders: D51 Woman in Gold for $18.00