Roman Polanski Plans Dreyfus Flick
Polish director Roman Polanski’s next film will be a political thriller based on the Dreyfus Affair.
The acclaimed director announced Wednesday that the new film, titled “D,” will reunite the team that produced his award-winning film “Ghost Writer.”
Albert Dreyfus was a French Jewish army officer who was falsely convicted of treason in 1894. In the ensuing 12-year battle to clear his name, anti-Semitism played a major factor.
Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, covered the story for a Viennese newspaper and was inspired by the trial to found an international Zionist organization.
Polanski is a Holocaust survivor, and his escape from the Krakow Ghetto was the backdrop for his 2002 movie “The Pianist.” He has lived in Europe since pleading guilty to statutory rape in 1978.
“I have long wanted to make a film about the Dreyfus Affair, treating it not as a costume drama but as a spy story,” Polanski told the Los Angeles Times. “In this way one can show its absolute relevance to what is happening in today’s world.”
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
