The Bojarski Affair

In The Bojarski Affair, Jean-Paul Salomé unearths a little-known chapter in French criminal history to paint a portrait of a man rather than simply making a genre film. The filmmaker takes up the story of Jan Bojarski, a Polish engineer who became the most formidable counterfeiter of the postwar period, and refuses to turn him into a spectacular bandit. What strikes the viewer immediately is the almost humble way in which the story unfolds: cramped workshops, meticulous gestures, thick silences. The film views its hero as an obsessive craftsman rather than a criminal. This approach, informed by extensive documentary research, gives the feature film a unique density, close to an old-fashioned psychological thriller, where the focus is not on action but on the slow construction of a clandestine destiny.

The film's great strength lies in Reda Kateb's magnetic performance, which lends Ceslaw Jan Bojarski an almost mineral presence. He portrays an opaque man, entrenched behind his technical intelligence, whose emotions filter through only tiny cracks. At his side, Sara Giraudeau plays Suzanne, a wife caught in a painful limbo, oscillating between suspicion and denial. Their relationship is never treated as mere dramatic backdrop: it becomes an intimate laboratory of lies, a zone where love collides with obsession. It is clear that Jean-Paul Salomé, with writing assistance from Bastien Daret and Delphine Gleize, has sought to avoid caricaturing the sacrificed woman in order to construct a character riddled with credible contradictions.

The long-distance duel between Jan Bojarski and Inspector Mattei, played by Bastien Bouillon, forms the backbone of the story. Rather than a noisy manhunt, the film depicts a mutual, almost elegant fascination. Bastien Bouillon gives the policeman a dandyish stiffness and a manner of speaking from another era, as if he had stepped out of a Jean-Pierre Melville film. The rare face-to-face encounters, notably the scene set in a hotel in Vichy, are imbued with a hushed tension, with each man seeming to recognize in the other his mirror image. Around them, Pierre Lottin brings a rougher touch, portraying a whimsical accomplice who recalls the hero's immigrant past and the working-class roots of the case.

However, this exceptional romantic material is sometimes hampered by a perhaps overly cautious direction. Jean-Paul Salomé favors a rigorous reconstruction of the 1950s, but the camera remains illustrative at times, as if afraid to fully embrace the gentle madness of its subject. Julien Hirsh's meticulous photography and Françoise Dupertuis' sets recreate a credible post-war Paris, but the whole sometimes lacks visual rough edges. We can guess what the film could have become if it had dared to take more formal risks, matching the technical audacity of Jan Bojarski himself.

What is most fascinating is the film's take on exile and social frustration. The script reminds us that Jan Bojarski, a brilliant inventor deprived of patents and administrative identity, was denied legal recognition. His descent into crime thus appears as a twisted revenge against a France that mistrusts its foreigners. This political dimension, which is never emphasized, gives the film an unexpected contemporary resonance. The sequences devoted to the manufacture of banknotes, which are almost documentary in nature, convey the idea of a man seeking to prove his worth through the perfection of his forgeries.

Mathieu Lambolley's music, combining mechanical sounds and melodic themes, intelligently accompanies this plunge into obsession. Valérie Deseine's editing favors duration, allowing silences and gestures to breathe. Behind each shot, we sense Jean-Paul Salomé's desire to film the work rather than the spectacular. The film thus becomes a meditation on artifice: what is an original, what is a copy, and where does creation begin? The final auction, where the fakes sell for more than the real ones, offers an ironic and almost philosophical conclusion.
Despite its formal reservations, The Bojarski Affair stands out as a serious and inspired work, carried by a quartet of remarkable actors (Reda Kateb, Sara Giraudeau, Bastien Bouillon, and Pierre Lottin) and by Jean-Paul Salomé's sincere conviction. The film may not have the flamboyant scope that such a destiny called for, but it succeeds in the essential: humanizing a myth of paper and ink. We leave with the lingering image of a man bent over his copper plates, searching for the truth of his existence in the fake, and with the desire to know more about this mysterious Jan Bojarski, an artist in spite of himself.

The Bojarski Affair
Directed by Jean-Paul Salomé
Written by Jean-Paul Salomé, Bastien Daret
Produced by Bertrand Faivre, Florence Gastaud
Starring Reda Kateb, Sara Giraudeau, Bastien Bouillon, Pierre Lottin, Quentin Dolmaire, Victor Poirier, Olivier Loustau, Lolita Chammah, Camille Japy, Arthur Teboul, Francis Leplay, François Pérache, Alain Bouzigues, Christophe Kourotchkine, Frédéric Buret, Pierre Giraud, Helena Sadowy
Cinematography: Julien Hirsch
Edited by Valérie Deseine
Music by Mathieu Lamboley
Production companies: Le Bureau, Les Compagnons du cinéma, 4 SOFICA
Distributed by Le Pacte (France)
Release dates: January 14, 2026 (France)
Running time: 128 minutes

Seen on January 12, 2026 at the Cinématheque (Paris)

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