Roman Polanski's AN OFFICER AND A SPY Sets U.S. Premiere at Film Forum

Film Forum will present the US premiere of AN OFFICER AND A SPY, directed by Roman Polanski, on Friday, August 8. The movie had its world premiere at the 2019 Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize and the FIPRESCI Prize. It received twelve nominations for the 45th César Awards and won the awards for Best Adaptation, Best Costume Design, and Best Director.

Paris, 1895: Jewish Army Captain Alfred Dreyfus (Louis Garrel) is ceremoniously stripped of his status and sentenced to life on a penal colony for passing secrets to Germany. Officer George Picquart (Jean Dujardin), appointed head of military counter-intelligence, discovers that the Germans continue to receive secrets, and that a mole is still at large. Polanski and Harris (Conclave) – who also collaborated on THE GHOST WRITER – forge a historical thriller from deeply researched details of the Dreyfus Affair, a scandal that divided French society for 12 years, elicited Émile Zola's famed "J'accuse...!" open letter, and remains a monumental case of institutional injustice and antisemitism.

More than a century after Dreyfus' conviction, the case continues to reverberate in France. On June 3, 2025, Roger Cohen reported in The New York Times: "The French National Assembly, or lower house of Parliament, took a big step in that direction [of reparations] on Monday when it voted unanimously to promote Dreyfus, who was publicly stripped of his rank and sentenced to life imprisonment, to the rank of brigadier general. It was an apparent acknowledgment that, after more than 130 years and at a time of repeated desecrations of Jewish sites in France, the Republic’s atonement had been incomplete."