Director Margarethe von Trotta collaborates with screenwriter Pamela Katz to explore a key chapter in the life of German/Jewish political theorist and philosopher Hannah Arendt (Barbara Sukowa), who coined the phrase "banality of evil" while covering the 1961 trial of former Nazi Adolf Eichmann for The New Yorker. As the high-profile trial gets underway, Sukowa's astute observations on both Eichmann and the Jewish councils prove to be highly thought-provoking, and deeply controversial.