A gripping courtroom drama, The Goldman Case follows the real-life 1976 trial of French activist and left-wing intellectual Pierre Goldman. Played by Arieh Worthalter, the film shows what happened when self-confessed armed robber Goldman stood trial for two murders he didn’t commit. Defending him is attorney Georges Kiejman (Arthur Harari, the Oscar-winning co-writer of another great recent French judicial saga Anatomy Of A Fall). 

The film’s director Cédric Kahn (2014’s Wild Life) discovered Goldman through reading his autobiography Dim Memories Of A Polish Jew In France. ‘It was interesting to have his take on the way he defended. He told his story and defended the case, but also he told the story of his parents, his family,’ says Kahn. ‘And I was fascinated by the character and by his speech, by his mastery of speech. That’s why I decided I would make a film about him and it would be on this aspect.’ 

The film is almost entirely set in the confines of the courtroom, leading to intense dialogue-driven exchanges, but Kahn and his co-writer Nathalie Hertberg didn’t rely on Goldman’s book. ‘It was more the articles of the time. The book was just a few sentences. It was the covering of the trial at the time by newspapers… so we really used all this archive as a basis for the script.’

Much of the film hinges on false testimony, with Goldman under the belief that various witnesses called against him were antisemitic. ‘He was one of the first who actually stood for his Jewishness, claiming the fact that he was Jewish and what he was going through had to do with his Jewish identity,’ says Kahn. Clearly enlivened by the experience, the director calls The Goldman Case a ‘unique adventure’ to work on. ‘I think it’s the first time that I felt sad [on a shoot] when it was over.’

The Goldman Case is in cinemas from Friday 20 September.