Rudolf Abel is arrested in 1957 in Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies.
Abel, a Soviet intelligence officer living undercover in the United States, is arrested by the FBI in June 1957. Insurance lawyer James B. Donovan is assigned to defend him, beginning the legal and diplomatic relationship at the heart of the film.
The movie later moves into the early 1960s, when Donovan becomes involved in negotiations after American pilot Francis Gary Powers is captured by the Soviet Union. Abel’s eventual exchange for Powers provides the story’s historical resolution.
Bridge of Spies was released in 2015 and dramatizes events from the Cold War. The film takes some dramatic liberties, but the arrest date is a clear historical marker. A common confusion is placing Abel’s arrest in 1960, the year Powers’s U-2 aircraft was shot down; the arrest occurred three years earlier.