The Goldman Case
A prolific filmmaker who emerged in the early 1990s, Cédric Kahn, a former assistant editor to Maurice Pialat, has built up a body of work that often highlights the wanderings and excesses of atypical characters, driven by troubled or gnarled inner motivations. Le Procès Goldman, his recent film about the political and criminal career of activist and writer Pierre Goldman, gives us the opportunity to revisit some of these films in our collections.
Winner of the César Award for Best Actor for Arieh Worthalter
In 1976, the appeal hearing of Jewish far-left activist Pierre Goldman is set to begin. Sentenced to life imprisonment for four armed robberies, one of which resulted in the death of two women, Goldman pleads not guilty to the murder charges. The massively-covered court proceedings transform Goldman into a romantic figure and a hero of the intellectual left, even as the relationship with his young attorney Georges Kiejman frays. Ever the agitator for his ideals, the elusive and mercurial Goldman throws his own trial into chaos, risking a death sentence. The Goldman Case paints a psycho-pathological portrait of a militant revolutionary, but also of a society torn apart by patterns of racism and injustice that are still virulent today.
Cédric Kahn
Cédric Kahn is a French screenwriter, actor, and director. Showing little interest in traditional studies, he exhibited a strong passion for cinema from his teenage years. He quickly made his way into the film industry after completing his studies, notably working as an assistant to editor Yann Dedet on Maurice Pialat's film Under the Sun of Satan, which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1987. He is known for his films L’ennui (1998), Roberto Succo (2001), Red Lights (2004), and The Prayer (2018). As an actor, he has recently appeared in Paweł Pawlikowski's Cold War and Cédric Jimenez's November. In 2023, he directed The Goldman Case, which depicts the second trial of Pierre Goldman.
