Roman Polanski’s most personal film since The Pianist (2002) revisits one of the most egregious miscarriages of justice in French history: the Dreyfus Affair, which shook the country’s military and government in the late 19th century. It can also be read as a suggestive nod to his own 1977 case involving unlawful sex with a minor, for which he pleaded guilty before fleeing the United States in 1978. Since then, he has lived and worked primarily in France, while also facing extradition attempts in Switzerland and Poland.

An Officer and a Spy, released in France as J’Accuse …!, where it won several César Awards, including Best Director, arrives in U.S. theaters six years later, delayed by the post-#MeToo backlash against Polanski. (His most recent film, the critically panned farce The Palace from 2023, appears unlikely to screen here.) Adapted from Robert Harris’s 2013 novel, the film tells the story of Alfred Dreyfus (Louis Garrel), a Jewish army officer accused of spying for Germany, through the eyes of Colonel Georges Picquart (Jean Dujardin), a former teacher of Dreyfus and a key figure in the original prosecution that led to the officer’s exile to Devil’s Island in French Guiana.

The drama opens in 1895 with Dreyfus’s post-conviction public humiliation: marched before hundreds of soldiers, stripped of stripes and medals, and forced to watch his sword broken in two. Picquart, in the crowd, makes an anti-Semitic joke at his expense.

A year later, promoted to head the French army’s secret service, Picquart discovers irregularities in the evidence and uncovers proof that another officer, Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, is the real spy. Yet when he presents these findings to his superiors, he is told in no uncertain terms to drop the matter. Dreyfus was already found guilty and sentenced; there is no need, they argue, to reopen a case that could tarnish the army’s reputation. Persisting in his investigation, Picquart alienates the institution he has served for 25 years and ends up imprisoned for insubordination.

The film’s most resonant subplot involves Picquart turning to the press to reveal what he cannot state publicly, prompting Émile Zola (André Marcon) to write his famous “J’accuse,” which leads to Zola’s trial for defaming the army. Picquart faces the entrenched old guard, who accuse him of fabricating the very evidence that proves Dreyfus’s innocence—even as he shares the era’s casual anti-Semitism. In an early flashback, he bluntly tells Dreyfus he does not like Jews.

With this robust material, Polanski has crafted an absorbing procedural, burnished by Pawe? Edelman’s cinematography, Jean Rabasse’s meticulous production design, Pascaline Chavanne’s authentic costumes, Hervé de Luze’s precise editing, and Alexandre Desplat’s atmospheric score.

Dujardin makes a sturdy, slightly stuffy Picquart, while Garrel gives a wiry, anxious turn as Dreyfus. The supporting cast is strong: Mathieu Amalric as arrogant handwriting expert Alphonse Bertillon, convinced of Dreyfus’s guilt, and Grégory Gadebois as officer Hubert-Joseph Henry, Picquart’s adversary. In a misjudged subplot, Polanski’s wife, Emmanuelle Seigner, appears as a married woman having an affair with Picquart—one of the few melodramatic detours in an otherwise taut and skillful piece of storytelling.

Polanski, who lost family members in the Holocaust, brings personal weight to his depiction of anti-Semitism. In the press notes, he also says, “I am familiar with many of the workings of the apparatus of persecution shown in the film,” a statement that veers toward special pleading, as if likening his own 1978 conviction, sentencing, and flight from justice to Dreyfus’s wrongful imprisonment. At least Polanski is too accomplished a filmmaker to draw such parallels bluntly.