The Goldman Case (2023) Review: A Trial Fought in Words

Is The Goldman Case worth watching?

Yes. The Goldman Case is a superb courtroom drama that turns a real 1970s appeal hearing into something as tense as a thriller, without leaving the courtroom. Cédric Kahn strips the story to testimony, cross-examination and outbursts from the dock, and Arieh Worthalter’s performance as the defendant is ferocious. The only caution is that it is dense and talk-driven, and it rewards viewers willing to follow a lot of argument in subtitles.

What is The Goldman Case about?

The Goldman Case is set in Paris in November 1975, as the appeal of Pierre Goldman (Worthalter) is about to begin. Goldman, a Jewish far-left activist, has been sentenced to life imprisonment for a series of armed robberies, including one in which two people were killed. He admits to the others but insists he is innocent of that one, and his case has become a cause for parts of the French left.

The film follows the hearing from its opening days, with Arthur Harari as his defence lawyer and Stéphan Guérin-Tillié and Nicolas Briançon among the courtroom players. Kahn directs, and it is a French production in French. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023.

One room, no escape

Kahn makes a bold formal choice and holds to it. There are no flashbacks to the crimes, no reconstructions and almost no scenes outside the courtroom. Everything the audience learns about the robbery, the victims and Goldman’s life comes through witnesses on the stand, and the film trusts that the collision of their accounts is dramatic enough. It is.

The camera stays close, moving between the dock, the bench, the lawyers’ benches and a packed public gallery that reacts like a chorus. Because we only ever see what the court sees, the viewer is placed in the jury’s position: weighing contradictions, noticing hesitations, sensing how prejudice shapes what people remember. The staging feels austere at first and then increasingly claustrophobic.

Worthalter’s Goldman is a live wire

The film would not work without a defendant who could plausibly explode at any moment, and Worthalter gives it one. His Goldman is brilliant, arrogant and self-destructive, a man who seems to regard the trial as a political stage as much as a fight for his freedom. He interrupts, lectures and insults, sometimes to his own obvious harm, and the tension between his need to be heard and his lawyer’s need to win becomes the drama’s engine.

Harari is an excellent counterweight as the lawyer, patient and precise, visibly exasperated with a client who will not follow advice. Their scenes together, conducted in whispers and glances across the courtroom, show the gap between defending a person and defending a cause.

The politics under the procedure

What lifts The Goldman Case above a well-made trial film is its sense of time and place. The hearing becomes an argument about antisemitism, racism in policing, the legacy of the Second World War and the radical politics of post-1968 France, and Kahn allows these themes to surface through testimony rather than speeches. Some witnesses’ certainty says as much about French society as about the case.

The limitation is that this context can be demanding for viewers who know nothing about the period. The film offers little explanation of Goldman’s background or of the political climate beyond what is said in court, and the flow of names and dates can feel overwhelming in the early stretch. Patience is repaid, but it is required.

Who should watch The Goldman Case?

It is ideal for anyone who enjoys courtroom drama, true-crime history or performance-driven cinema, and for viewers who liked the argumentative intensity of recent French trial films. It is almost entirely dialogue, so it suits a focused evening rather than background viewing. Content is largely verbal: there is discussion of violent crime and racism, but little on-screen violence.

For more French drama in a similar vein:

• Anatomy of a Fall, another 2023 French courtroom drama that makes testimony itself the source of suspense.
• A Prophet, Jacques Audiard’s prison drama, for a harder look at French justice from the inside.
• La Haine, a raw portrait of police tension and social anger in France two decades later.

The verdict

The Goldman Case is courtroom cinema at its most gripping: austere in form, electric in performance and rich in historical meaning. Its density asks for concentration, but Kahn and Worthalter turn a legal hearing into an unforgettable portrait of a man and his era.

Rating: 4.5/5