The Goldman Case Overview

This gripping courtroom drama, which opened the prestigious Directors' Fortnight programme at this year's Cannes Film Festival, is a reworking of Frenchman Pierre Goldman's historic retrial in 1975. Traumatised as a child by his tormented Polish-Jewish parents and enchanted by the lure of revolutionary politics, Goldman found himself leading a life of violence and crime. Whilst he took pride in a series of armed robberies, he insisted on his innocence when accused of the murder of two pharmacists in Paris, in 1969. At court, Goldman was the sole defendant but the police and by extension, the French state were judged too, for their persistent antisemitism and racism. Little known in this country yet a hugely significant event in modern Jewish history, Pierre Goldman's trial -thrillingly captured in this drama -exposed the thin line that separates prejudice and truth.

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