L'affaire Dreyfus

L'affaire Dreyfus is a two-part television film from 1995, directed by Yves Boisset and produced jointly by France, Germany and the Czech Republic. Jorge Semprún's screenplay draws on Jean-Denis Bredin's book L'Affaire, and the whole drama runs for more than three hours. It recounts the judicial scandal that shook France at the end of the nineteenth century: Alfred Dreyfus, an army captain of Jewish origin, was found guilty of treason in 1894 on the strength of forged evidence and condemned to spend his life in prison on Devil's Island. Even when the evidence pointed to another officer as the true spy, the military hierarchy refused to acknowledge its error, and the affair grew into a national confrontation over justice, antisemitism and the army's reputation. The film traces the long legal and political campaign that eventually restored Dreyfus's name. Georges Wilson and Daniel Mesguich appear in the cast.