Maria Altmann, an octogenarian Jewish refugee, takes on the Austrian government to recover artwork she believes rightfully belongs to her family.
A portrait of Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, whose lavish, sexual paintings came to symbolize the art nouveau style of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
The film dramatises the imprisonment of Schiele in Neulengbach in 1911, and looks at the authenticity of Schile's prison diary, which was published after his death.