PG-13 | 2h 3m | Drama | 2025
As a form of resistance, Helmuth Hübener’s individually typed “pamphlets” were only incrementally more sophisticated than the handwritten protest messages that Otto and Elise Hampel left on postcards they scattered throughout Berlin. Yet both caused great alarm for the Gestapo.
The Hampels’ story was dramatized in “Alone in Berlin,” starring Emma Thompson and Brendan Gleeson.
This film is Hübener’s cinematic testament. To this day, Hübener probably still ranks as the most celebrated European Mormon. Tragically, it is largely because he also holds the distinction of being National Socialism’s youngest executed prisoner of conscience. Director-coscreenwriter Matt Whitaker shines a light on the remarkable true story of Hübener and his two Mormon friends and fellow dissidents in “Truth & Treason,” from Angel Studios.
Mormons have long felt a historical kinship with the Jewish people, so the regime’s extreme antisemitism instinctively and intellectually troubles Hübener (Ewan Horrocks). Yet his local bishop, Arthur Zander (Daniel Betts), ardently supports Hitler, even from the pulpit.
Despite his misgivings, Hübener joins the Hitler Youth and duly proclaims his loyalty to obtain a part-time job at city hall, thereby satisfying his stepfather, Hugo (Sean Mahon), a true-believing party member. However, the arrest and deportation of young Hübener’s Jewish friend Salomon Schwartz (Nye Occomore) outrages the 17-year-old, shaking Hübener out of his apathy.
Hübener might be young, but he shrewdly recognizes that the reality he sees with his own eyes is better reflected by the BBC reports he hears via an illegal shortwave radio than the official government propaganda. Capitalizing on his access to office supplies, Hübener starts making and distributing his own dissenting leaflets. Initially, he works alone, but soon he recruits Rudi Wobbe (Daf Thomas) and the more reluctant Karl-Heinz Schnibbe (Ferdinand McKay) to increase his reach.
Incorporating BBC transcriptions and quotations from banned literature, Hübener’s criticism of the state is quite pointed. Erwin Mussener (Rupert Evans), the fictional composite Gestapo investigator in charge of the case, presumes they must be the work of an adult of advanced learning. Even when his investigation narrows around Hübener, he assumes the teenager must be the unwitting tool of a more mature mastermind.
Shrewd viewers should not expect much in terms of justice from the Sondergericht or “Special Court,” especially when Mussener emerges as the sole advocate for relative restraint. Evans delivers a truly challenging, multilayered performance as the secret policeman. In one sense, he humanizes Mussener to a surprising extent. But his depiction also illuminates the corruption of a system that seduces ostensibly decent people to willingly commit atrocities on its behalf.
Flesh-and-Blood Teen
To his credit, Horrocks portrays Hübener as a real-life flesh-and-blood teenager, rather than a martyr in a Mormon passion play. McKay, Thomas, Occomore, and Horrocks all credibly look and act like high school students. They bring a youthful innocence and enthusiasm to their fact-based characters that invests the film with real poignancy. Joanna Christie has some quietly devastating scenes as Hübener’s mother, Emma, whom Mussener condescendingly dismisses as “simple.”
Previously, Hübener was the eponymous subject of Mormon playwright Thomas F. Rogers’s best-known stage play. Hübener remains something like a folk hero to Mormons, even though the role played by the local German branch of the Church is not entirely edifying.
Whitaker’s uncomfortably frank portrayal of Zander’s ministry never whitewashes his complicity or antisemitism. Indeed, the German Mormon Church in “Truth & Treason” quite closely parallels that of the German Lutheran Church as represented in Todd Komarnicki’s recent “Bonhoeffer. Pastor. Spy. Assassin,” which was also distributed by Angel Studios. This would make a fitting double feature with “Truth & Treason.”
Whitaker and coscreenwriter Ethan Vincent set out to tell Hübener’s story, unvarnished by bias or favoritism. They largely succeed by sticking to the historical record and mostly avoiding clichés. The costume and art design teams also created a quality period production, convincingly re-creating the grim, depressed wartime conditions of the early 1940s.
Throughout the film, the ensemble cast avoids cheap sentimentality in favor of messily human complexity. This is a much more thoughtful and disciplined work of cinema than the typical well-intentioned historically themed dramas that loudly announce their “teachable moments.”
Highly recommended for its bracing dramatic power.
“Truth & Treason” opened in theaters Oct. 17.
‘Truth & Treason’
Director: Matt Whitaker
Starring: Ewan Horrocks, Rupert Evans, Ferdinand McKay, Daf Thomas, Nye Occomore
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 2 hours, 3 minutes
Release Date: Oct. 17, 2025
Rated: 4 stars out of 5
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