Premiere - The Bojarski Affair : The Paris Premiere Brings a Forgotten True Story Back Into the Light

By Mulder, Paris, Cinémathèque française, 12 january 2026

On January 12, 2026, the Cinémathèque française hosted the Paris premiere of The Bojarski Affair, a moment that felt less like a traditional red-carpet screening and more like a quiet act of historical restitution, as if cinema itself were finally catching up with a story that had waited decades to be told. Our media was present on site to cover the event, capturing the introduction of the film’s creative team in a 4K video recorded inside the iconic Parisian venue. Director Jean-Paul Salomé, accompanied by actors Sara Giraudeau, Pierre Lottin, and Olivier Loustau, as well as producers Bertrand Faivre and Florence Gastaud, took time to address the audience, sharing a few words that immediately set the tone: this was not just a crime film, but the cinematic resurrection of a complex, solitary, and deeply human figure whose life straddled genius, invisibility, and moral ambiguity. The atmosphere in the room reflected that intention, with an attentive audience keenly aware that they were about to discover a true story largely absent from collective memory, despite its extraordinary nature 

Inspired by real events, The Bojarski Affair retraces the singular trajectory of Jan Bojarski, portrayed by Reda Kateb, a Polish engineer who fled to France during the Second World War and used his remarkable technical skills to forge documents under the German occupation. As confirmed by historical documentation and detailed in the film’s press notes, Bojarski’s post-war fate is where tragedy truly begins: lacking official civil status, he was unable to patent his numerous inventions, despite their authenticity and ingenuity, forcing him into a succession of poorly paid jobs that wasted his intellectual potential. This systemic exclusion ultimately led him down a darker path when he was approached by criminal networks and began forging banknotes of such quality that they would later become legendary within the Banque de France itself, where genuine Bojarski counterfeits are still preserved today. The film carefully reconstructs this descent into a double life, lived in secrecy from his family, while placing him under the relentless scrutiny of Inspector Mattei, played with unsettling restraint by Bastien Bouillon, a lawman whose real-life counterpart pursued Bojarski for nearly fifteen years, blurring the line between professional obsession and personal fascination.

What gives The Bojarski Affair its emotional weight, however, is not merely its meticulous historical reconstruction but the way Jean-Paul Salomé frames Bojarski as both an artisan and an outcast, a man driven as much by the need for recognition as by survival. Drawing from extensive documentation gathered with the help of journalist Jacques Briod, including authentic patents, photographs, and police records, the film faithfully recreates the clandestine workshop where Bojarski designed and built every machine used to print his counterfeit bills, from presses to inks, some of which were chemically altered using aspirin, a detail confirmed by archival sources. These sequences, shot with precise, almost tactile cinematography by Julien Hirsch, underline the paradox at the heart of the story: Bojarski was not a gangster by nature, but a craftsman whose genius had nowhere else to go. The dynamic between Reda Kateb and Sara Giraudeau, who plays Suzanne Bojarski, anchors this tragedy in domestic reality, depicting a marriage corroded by silence and secrets, while Pierre Lottin brings additional texture through a supporting role that subtly reflects the immigrant experience and fractured identities of post-war France.

The premiere also resonated on a more intimate level through the presence of the story’s legacy, as the production has openly acknowledged its exchanges with Bojarski’s daughter, Anne Bojarski, whose testimony helped contextualize the emotional cost of growing up in the shadow of secrecy. Her reflections, echoed in the press materials, reveal how the film offered her a form of belated clarity and emotional distance, transforming personal trauma into something intelligible and, perhaps, finally bearable. That dimension elevates The Bojarski Affair beyond genre conventions, aligning it with the great French tradition of character-driven cinema rather than a straightforward crime thriller, despite its noir influences and meticulous period reconstruction spanning Paris, Lyon, and Vichy.

Produced by Bertrand Faivre and Florence Gastaud for Le Bureau and Les Compagnons du Cinéma, with the participation of France 2 Cinéma, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Cinéma, Cactus Films, and Artémis Productions, and distributed in France by Le Pacte, The Bojarski Affair will be released nationwide on January 14, 2026. With a running time of 128 minutes and an original score by Mathieu Lamboley, whose mechanical motifs echo the obsessive precision of Bojarski’s work, the film arrives as both a gripping cinematic experience and a long-overdue act of recognition for a man whose talent once shook the very foundations of the Banque de France, even if history nearly forgot his name.

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Synopsis :
Jan Bojarski, a young Polish engineer, sought refuge in France during the war. He used his talents to forge documents during the German occupation. After the war, his lack of official identification prevented him from patenting his many inventions, and he was limited to low-paying odd jobs... until the day a gangster offered him the chance to use his exceptional talents to forge banknotes. This marked the beginning of a double life, unbeknownst to his family. He soon found himself in the crosshairs of Inspector Mattei, France's best cop.

The Bojarski Affair (L’affaire Bojarski)
Directed by Jean-Paul Salomé
Written by Jean-Paul Salomé, Bastien Daret, Delphine Gleize
Produced by Bertrand Faivre, Florence Gastaud 
Starring  Reda Kateb, Sara Giraudeau, Bastien Bouillon, Pierre Lottin, Camille Japy, Victor Poirier, Lolita Chammah, Olivier Loustau, Quentin Dolmaire, Arthur Teboul, Ambrine Trigo Ouaked, Héléna Sadowy 
Cinematography : Julien Hirsch
Edited by Valérie Deseine
Music by Mathieu Lamboley
Production companies : Le Bureau, Les Compagnons du Cinéma, France 2 Cinéma, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Cinéma, Cactus Films, Artémis Productions 
Distributed by Le Pacte (France)
Release dates :  January 14, 2026 (France)
Running time : 128 minutes

Photos and video : Boris Colletier / Mulderville