Director Ilan Ziv traces the origins of antisemitism in France from the Middle Ages to the Dreyfus Affair. Combining personal and collective narratives, Ziv showcases how the depiction of “the Jew” in society established an ideology of hate that eventually led to the Holocaust. In the aftermath of the war, a devastated France continued this ideology of antisemitism that set the stage for a modern wave of anti-Jewish sentiment and attacks, including the murders of Ilan Halimi and Mireille Knoll.
Ilan Ziv — Director
Ilan Ziv was born in Israel in 1950 and came to the United States after fighting in the Yom Kippur (The October) War in 1973. He’s a graduate of New York University film school, and in 1978 he co-produced New York’s first Middle East Film Festival.
He has directed dozens of documentaries dealing broadly with issues of human rights and investigations of contemporary history. Known for ARTE’s mini-series Capitalism (2014), BBC’s Exile A Myth Unearthed (2011), an investigation into the political ramifications of the myth of the Exile of the Jews, PBS’s Jesus Politics: The Bible and the Ballot (2008), a personal examination of the role of religion in American politics, PBS’s Six Days: The War That Changed the Middle East (2007) and Human Weapon (2002) hailed by The New York Times as “gripping and important.”