It may be divine intervention or just good ol' fashioned coincidence that Matt Whitaker's Truth & Treason hit theaters the same weekend as a nationwide series of "No Kings" protests were organized to protest the growing authoritarianism of the Trump Administration. It is all the more interesting that the film is being distributed by Angel Studios, the Christian-based production and distribution company that can usually be counted on by conservatives to not offend their sensibilities. Angel has released a number of very good movies in recent years, including the historical drama Cabrini (2024) and the horror-comedy Sketch (2025), both of which illustrate in vastly different ways—as does Truth & Treason—how wide-ranging and good Christian filmmaking can be when it balances style and substance. The hard-core MAGA crowd will likely miss the here-and-now relevance of Truth & Treason, but others will recognize frightening parallels with the here and now and see the film as an all-too-timely cautionary tale about what happens who otherwise good people do nothing while authoritarians crush free expression.

Based on a true story that Whitaker chronicled two decades ago in an hour-long documentary titled Truth & Conviction (2002), the film follows the efforts of a German teenager and his friends to counter Nazi propaganda by spreading leaflets about the horrors of Nazi ideology, the lies at the heart of Hitler's rhetoric, and the inevitability of Germany's defeat in World War II. All of this is, of course, truth, but to the Third Reich, anything that didn't comport with their alternative facts was treason. The protagonist is Helmuth Hübener (Ewan Horrocks), a 16-year-old who lives in Hamburg with his mother (Joanna Christie) and stepfather (Sean Mahon), the latter of whom has filly bought into Nazism and the former of whom is calmly complicit. Already uneasy with the rhetoric and actions of Hitler's regime, Helmuth feels compelled to action after he acquires an illicit ham radio that allows him to listen to BBC broadcasts and one of his friends, a half-Jewish boy named Salomon (Nye Occomore), is taken by the Nazis.

Using a typewriter he borrowed from his church, he begins writing anti-Nazi leaflets and distributing them around the city—stuffing them into mailboxes, tacking them to message boards, placing them inside coat pockets. He is soon joined by two friends, Kar-Heinz Schnibbe (Ferdinand McKay) and Rudi Wobbe (Daf Thomas), who overcome their initial reluctance and put their lives on the line to counter official Nazi rhetoric. The leaflets quickly attract the attention of the Gestapo, and one of their primary agents, Erwin Mussener (Rupert Evans), is tasked with tracking down and apprehending those responsible, which turns the film into a nightly game of cat-and-mouse with potentially deadly consequences.

Trust & Treason has a number of intriguing, brave qualities, one of the most important being its complete investment in the importance of free and open speech. After all, the film's protagonists are not trying to stage an uprising or assassinate prominent Nazis or plant bombs; rather, they are simply spreading information—truth—that calls into question all the official lies the Third Reich was peddling to justify their inhuman actions and genocidal intentions (the film begins in the middle of World War II, when the Final Solution was well underway). Intertwined with the film's theme of freedom of speech and thought is the role of organized religion, which is both heralded and scorned. It is clear that much of Helmuth's motive to counter the Nazis was driven by his strong Christian beliefs; at the same time, though, his church is depicted as a spineless collaborator, with his priest preaching the a twisted version of the biblical imperative that Christians should follow their government's rules. It is perhaps too on the nose, but one of the film's most pointed images finds Helmuth sitting in the church, flanked on one side by a portrait of Jesus and on the other side by a portrait of Hitler, both in profile so they are looking at each other (and Helmuth). He clearly chooses Christ, while his priest (and his stepfather and so many others in Hamburg) kowtow to the obvious evils of Nazism. It is a beautiful irony that Helmuth does his anti-Nazi work with a church typewriter, a potent remind of the power of words.

Copyright © 2025 James Kendrick

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