Comme un juif en France

n invaluable companion-piece to both THE SORROW AND THE PITY and SHOAH, this epic two-part documentary traces the special relationship between France and its Jewish citizens from Napoleonic times to the present day. As the film demonstrates, it has been a profoundly double-edged relationship. France was the first European nation to grant Jews full citizenship, hosted a thriving Jewish culture after America closed its golden door in the 1920s, elected a Jewish Socialist prime minister in 1936, and wholeheartedly supported Israel during the Six-Day War. On the other hand, France also has an ignoble history of anti-Semitism stretching from the Dreyfus Affair through the Vichy period to the synagogue bombings of recent years. Director Jeuland, whose award-winning histories of Parisian gay life (BLEU BLANC ROSE) and French Communism (CAMARDES) have established him as one of France’s leading documentarians, interweaves newsreels, classic films, pop songs, and other fascinating cultural artifacts with moving and insightful testimonies from French politicians, intellectuals and artists, including former Minister of Justice Robert Badinter, actor Jean Benguigui, Rabbi and author Daniel Farhi, playwright/screenwriter Jean-Claude Grumberg (THE LAST METRO), filmmaker Marceline Loridan, Resistance leader Theo Klein, and historian Annette Wieviorka. Part I begins with the Dreyfus Affair and ends with the enduring shame of Vichy collaboration with the Nazis. The lengthier Part II tackles the more complex issues facing postwar French Jewry, including French denials of collaboration, the massive influx of Sephardic Jews from Africa in the 1950s, the rise of Jewish identity politics, and changing public attitudes toward Israel.