This year, 2025, marks the 80th anniversary of the commencement of the Nuremberg Trials, when 22 of the highest-ranking surviving leaders of Nazi Germany were placed in the dock to answer for their crimes against humanity.

Those trials were a landmark in many ways, but 80 years is a long time. For many in Generations Y and Z, for whom WWII was not a staple of their education or everyday cultural intake, this is fast becoming the stuff of ancient history. In tackling those events and reminding us of their importance in an age when fascist thinking is again on the rise, screenwriter and director James Vanderbilt has a lot of heavy lifting to do.

Rami Malik and Russell Crowe in Nuremburg. Image supplied

Names which haunted people born in the post-war era – Himmler, Hess, Streicher and Göring among them – are not as grimly familiar as they once were. Inevitably, the educative task weighs a little heavily on Vanderbilt’s screenplay, which has a lot of explaining to do before we get to the crux of the drama: the battle of wills between Hermann...