Roman Polanski’s drama places at Venice Film Festival
A life sentence on the Devil’s Island penal colony was passed down to Alfred Dreyfus in 1894, before he was found guilty during a second trial in 1899 and finally exonerated in 1906. (Image Courtesy: France 24).
Roman Polanski’s An Officer and a Spy (2019), based off the Robert Harris novel of the same name, garnered the second-place prize Saturday at the Venice Film Festival, according to France 24. In it, Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picquart (Jean Dujardin) clandestinely reinvestigates evidence that proves Captain Alfred Dreyfus (Louis Garrel) is innocent of the treasonous accusations against him, only for the anti-Semitic Third French Republic to suppress it in the 1890s. Theodor Herzl, a Hungarian Jewish journalist corresponding in Paris at the time for an Austrian newspaper, would go on to become the father of Zionism as we know it today because of the Dreyfus Affair, leading to the founding of Israel in 1948.
I am an award-winning journalist, memoirist, and personal essayist in Denver, Colorado. I hold a Master of Arts in Professional Creative Writing with a concentration in Nonfiction from the University of Denver, as well as a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Media Communication from Colorado State University Fort Collins, with a concentration in Publications Writing, Editing, and Production, and an interdisciplinary minor in Film Studies. I am passionate about inspiring positive change and meaningful action through the power of the literary arts.
View all posts by Hunter Goddard, MA, BA
Hunter Goddard 