Prima Facie

Tessa Ensler loves the law and plays it like a sport. A cleaner's daughter who got to Cambridge on a scholarship, she's now one of London's most promising criminal defence barristers, and much of her work is defending men accused of sexual assault, taking apart the women who accuse them under cross-examination. It doesn't keep her up at night. Everyone deserves the best possible defence, and every trial is a game she plays to win.

Things have never looked better. She's shortlisted for a major award, rival chambers are courting her and she's started seeing Julian, a colleague everyone finds charming. Then one night, after a date, he rapes her in her own flat. Tessa goes to the police that same night, and three years later the case comes to trial. This time she's the complainant, and the barrister cross-examining her uses the same tactics she's spent her career perfecting.

Suzie Miller spent years as a criminal defence and human rights lawyer in Australia before turning to theatre, and that experience shaped the one-woman play she premiered in Sydney in 2019. Jodie Comer took it to the West End and Broadway, winning the Olivier and the Tony for Best Actress, and the London production reached cinemas as 'National Theatre Live: Prima Facie'. Miller wrote 'Prima Facie' for the screen herself, and Susanna White, who made 'Our Kind of Traitor' and directed episodes of 'Andor', is behind the camera.

Cynthia Erivo, also an executive producer, takes over as Tessa, and the film adds race to the play's questions of class: she's a Black woman in a profession dominated by a white, privately educated elite. Daniel Ings plays Julian, Noma Dumezweni and Toheeb Jimoh are her mum and brother, and Simon Russell Beale is the defence KC. The Australian-British co-production was shot in London in autumn 2025, at Story Works studios and on location at the Old Bailey, with a score by Isobel Waller-Bridge, who composed the music for 'Fleabag'.

It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on 13 September 2026, played the London Film Festival in October and opens in UK and Irish cinemas on 13 November. Critics have been split. Nearly all of them praise Erivo; the complaints are about the voiceover and how much of the monologue's force gets lost once it leaves the stage.

• Crime
• Drama