A few days ago, in the suburban surroundings of the Phoenix cinema in Finchley, north London, a major film by a great director that positively hums with contemporary relevance received its first, and by the looks of it, only showing in the English-speaking world.
Like so many examples of authoritarianism, the censorship is confined to the Anglosphere
The Jewish Film Festival finally found the courage that art house cinemas, the BBC, Channel 4, and all the streaming services lacked and put on An Officer and a Spy for one night only. And now it has gone again. Even Amazon Prime does not have it, and it is meant to have everything.
The suppression of the film version of Robert Harris’s novel about the Dreyfus Affair of 1894 to 1906 is the most glaring act of censorship in recent cinema history.
Like so many examples of authoritarianism, the censorship is confined to the Anglosphere. The French version, entitled J’accuse, won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2019 Venice Film Festival.
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