Polanski’s next film subject: the Dreyfus Affair

A history-altering case of anti-Semitism will serve as the subject of the next film by Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski.

The filmmaker, who survived the Holocaust as a child, has signed on to make “D,” a drama about the Dreyfus Affair, in which a Jewish captain in the French army was falsely accused and convicted of spying for Germany. The scandal, which began in 1894, remains one of the most infamous cases of French anti-Semitism, and was the reason cited by Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, for his belief that Jews needed their own homeland because they would never be accepted in Europe.

“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 said of the new movie. “In this way one can show its absolute relevance to what is happening in today’s world – the age-old spectacle of the witch hunt of a minority group, security paranoia, secret military tribunals, out-of-control intelligence agencies, governmental cover-ups, and a rabid press.”

Coming from Polanski, “D” is likely to be viewed at least partly as a representation of its director’s own legal troubles. Unlike Dreyfus, who was ultimately exonerated, Polanski’s reputation has never fully recovered from a differently highly charged controversy: his 1977 statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl in California. Rather than face a prison sentence, the director — already a major star for his work on “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Chinatown” — fled the United States. In an irony sure to be revisited with the release of “D,” he sought refuge in France, where he held citizenship, and which has been his home for most of the period since.

“D” will not be the director’s first foray into films dealing with anti-Semitism. He received an Oscar for directing 2002’s “The Pianist,” about a Jewish survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, but missed the ceremony because he would have been arrested had he returned to the US to collect it.