He was the son of Pierre Goldman, a controversial political activist whose life intertwined with crime, literature, and a mystery wrapped in public intrigue. Born to Polish Jewish parents who fought in the French Resistance, he absorbed radical ideas from his mother and grew up with the shadows of political struggle hovering over him. He rejected participation in the May 68 uprisings, which he viewed as a movement tied to his father. Instead, he traveled to Venezuela to join a guerrilla group. Returning to Paris, he found himself entangled with the criminal underworld, facing a series of armed robberies. He pleaded guilty to three of them while denying involvement in another, which carried accusations of killing two pharmacists.
Sentenced to life imprisonment in December 1969, he wrote from prison a book in which he declared his innocence, titled Dark memories of a French-born Polish Jew. Intellectuals and celebrities of the era, drawn to its language and the fierce debates it sparked, included Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone Signorek, who supported the groups around him. He was acquitted of the deaths on appeal in 1976 due to a lack of evidence. This second trial is the focus of a film directed by Cédric Kahn, which methodically reconstructs the case now premiering in Spain, under the title Goldman Affair.
a cinematic character
“I read his book about two decades ago, and it had a tremendous impact,” explains Kahn, who was born into a left‑wing Jewish family himself. “He published it as a defense against an unjust punishment, and what struck me most was the charisma conveyed through those pages. He was clever, provocative, ambiguous, manipulative, galvanic, a punk ahead of his time and a truly cinematic figure.” The Goldman Affair does not seek a verdict on guilt or innocence. “My opinion does not matter, and he played the game of confusion in the defendant’s chair, sometimes confessing and at other times hinting at responsibility,” the director notes. “My focus was to recreate the trial’s atmosphere and place the viewer in a role similar to that of the jury.”
Critique of the Goldman Trial: Staging of Justice
Set in a period when radical left movements employed crime as a tactic, including groups like Baader-Meinhof and the Red Brigades, the film shows how the case quickly became a political firefight. “A trial is, above all, a dialectical clash, and Goldman embodied that edge,” the director observes. “He used rhetoric to shift attention from the central crime, turning himself into a victim of oppression.”
Courage and radicalism
The Goldman trial dominates the film, largely staying within the courtroom where verbal clashes erupt between lawyers, witnesses, jurors, and the defendant. He gestures, shouts, and exudes the charisma of a rock star, as Kahn puts it. “For Parisian intellectuals, he stood for the courage and radicalism that marked the late 1960s, a time when revolution gave way to a world that embraced capitalism, and where institutions leaned away from the left.”
The movie places France at a crossroads marked by racism, police brutality, and anti-Semitism, themes the director sees as still relevant today. He notes a polarization in French politics, with the space between extreme ends shrinking, and a rise in racism threading through society and across ideological lines. Pierre Goldman was murdered in 1979 at 35, by a small ultra group aligned with the police. His widow, Christiane Succab, has voiced concerns about the film, believing it makes errors that could harm her husband’s memory. The director acknowledges her concerns and states that the script largely relies on newspaper reports and other documents, while offering a personal perspective on the events. He emphasizes that the work is fictional and not presented as an official account, even as it centers on the protagonist’s experience.