Roman Polanski to direct Dreyfus Affair movie

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Roman Polanski

Roman Polanski’s next film will be a political thriller based on the Dreyfus Affair.

The director announced on 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 wrongly convicted of treason in 1894. A 12-year battle ensued, in which anti-Semitism played a major factor. Theodore Herzl covered the story for a Viennese newspaper and was inspired by the trial to launch the modern Zionist movement.

Polanski, a Holocaust survivor who escaped from the Krakow Ghetto, made the 2002 Holocaust movie “The Pianist.” He has lived in Europe since fleeing the U.S. in 1978 after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.

“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 LA Times. “In this way one can show its absolute relevance to what is happening in today’s world.”

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