Law on Film
by Jonathan Hafetz
Law on Film explores the rich connections between law and film. Law is critical to many films, even to those that are not obviously about the legal world. Film, meanwhile, tells us a lot about the law, especially how it is perceived and portrayed. The podcast is created and hosted by Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer, legal scholar, and film buff. Each episode, Jonathan and a guest expert will examine a film that is noteworthy from a legal perspective. What does the film get right about the law and what does it get wrong? Why is law important to understanding the film? And what does the film teach about law's relationship to the larger society and culture that surrounds it. Whether you're interested in law, film, or an entertaining discussion, there will be something here for you.
Episodes
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One Person, One Vote? (2024) (Guests: Paul Finkelman & Maximina Juson) (episode 65)
The Electoral College is one of the most consequential—and perhaps least understood—features of the American constitutional system. Americans often think of themselves as voting for president, but technically they vote for electors, through a system created at the founding that was deeply...
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Souleymane's Story (L'Histoire de Souleymane) (2024) (Guest: Sharon Weill) (episode 64)
Souleymane's Story (L’Histoire de Souleymane), directed by Boris Lojkine, is anchored by the powerful performance of Abou Sangaré as a delivery worker from Guinea who is seeking asylum in France. What begins as a story of daily survival becomes a story about the legal and administrative processes...
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The Alabama Solution (2025) (Guest: Joseph Margulies) (episode 63)
The Alabama Solution is a searing documentary about Alabama’s prison system and the broader crisis of mass incarceration. Directed by Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman, the film draws on years of secretly recorded cell phone footage made by incarcerated people, offering an unusually intimate…
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Shadow of a Doubt (1943) (Guest: Daniel Ortiz) (episode 62)
Alfred Hitchcock’s 1943 film, Shadow of a Doubt (1943), sets a murder story inside what seems the safest place imaginable: an ordinary American family in an ordinary American town. But as suspicion gathers around Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotton), the film slowly exposes something more unsettling…
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Blade Runner & Blade Runner 2049 (Guest: Frank Pasquale) (episode 61)
This episode we look at Blade Runner (1982) (dir. Ridley Scott) and its sequel Blade Runner 2049 (2017) (dir. Denis Villeneuve), two films that imagine a world where the line between human and machine, creation and creator, has all but vanished. Ridley Scott’s 1982 classic depicted a rain-soaked...
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Erin Brockovich (2000) (Guest: Dror Ladin) (episode 60)
Erin Brockovich (2000) (directed by Steven Soderbergh) is based on the true story of Erin Brockovich, a legal assistant without formal training, who uncovers one of the most significant environmental lawsuits in U.S. history: the case against Pacific Gas and Electric for contaminating groundwater...
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Monster (2003) (Guest: Mara Malagodi) (episode 59)
This episode examines a case that sits at the uneasy boundary between criminal adjudication, media power, and moral authority: the prosecution and execution of Aileen Wuornos, labeled the “first female serial killer. We look at two documentaries by Nick Broomfield—Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a...
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My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow (2024) (Russian) (Guests: Rachel Denber & Anna Nemzer) (episode 58)
My Undesirable Friends: Part I—Last Air in Moscow (2024) is Russian-language American documentary film written and directed by Julia Loktev (with co-director Anna Nemzer). The film describes the effort to maintain press freedoms in Putin’s Russia in the period leading up to the full-scale…
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Small Things Like These (2024) (Guest: Sean Patrick Donlan) (episode 57)
Small Things Like These (2024), adapted by Edna Walsh from Claire Keegan’s 2021 novel, tells the story of how coal merchant Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy) uncovers disturbing secrets in a small Irish town in the mid-1980s. While going about his job delivering coal, Furlong discovers the truth…
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Syriana (2005): Special Commentary (Guest: Peggy McGuiness)
We return to Syriana, a film we discussed previously in Episode 40, but one that feels newly urgent in light of the current war with Iran. When it was released in 2005, the film offered a dense, unsettling portrait of a post-9/11 world shaped by oil, covert operations, and overlapping networks of...
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The Lives of Others (2006) (Guests: Mark Drumbl & Barbora Hola) (episode 56)
This episode looks at The Lives of Others, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s haunting exploration of surveillance, complicity, and the brittle architecture of authoritarian legality in the final years of the German Democratic Republic (GDR/East Germany). The critically acclaimed 2006 film…
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The Killing Fields (1984) (Guest: Alexandra Meise) (episode 55)
The Killing Fields (1984), directed by Roland Joffe, depicts the Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia and the genocide that followed, which resulted in the death of approximately 2-3 million people. The film is based on the experiences of New York Times journalist Sydney Schanberg (Sam Waterson) and...
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Conclave (2024) (Guest: Monsignor Raymond Kupke) (episode 54)
In Conclave (2024), Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) organizes a conclave to elect a new pope. Key candidates and factions vie with one another as the process plays out until finally a new pope is elected. The film was directed by Edward Berger from a script by Peter Straughan (based on…
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Inglourious Basterds (2009) (Guest Renana Keydar) (episode 53)
Inglourious Basterds (2009), written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, revolves around two plots to assassinate Nazi leaders during the closing years of World War II. One plot centers on a secret band of Jewish-American soldiers under the command of Ltn. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt)—the “Basterds”—who...
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I'm Still Here (Brazil) (2024) (Guest: Isabela Amaral) (episode 52)
I’m Still Here (dir. Walter Salles, 2024) is based on the true story of the enforced disappearance and murder of former congressman Rubens Paiva by the military dictatorship in Brazil. The film opens in Rio de Janeiro in 1970, where Rubens lives with his wife, Eunice, and their five children.…
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An Officer and a Spy (2019) (Guest: William Schabas) (episode 51)
This episode explores An Officer and a Spy (J’accuse in French), Roman Polanski’s 2019 film about the Dreyfus Affair in France. The Dreyfus Affair is one of most significant events in late 19th/early 20th century, an event whose implications reverberated for decades in France and around the…
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Juror #2 (2024) (Guest: Frank Wohl) (episode 50)
This episode examines Juror #2, Clint Eastwood’s most recent—and perhaps final—film. Juror #2 centers around the trial of a man accused of murdering his girlfriend after a fight at a bar, leaving her in a ditch by the side of a road. The twist comes early: Justin Kemp a/k/a Juror #2 (played by...
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Vindication Swim (2024) (Guest: Elliot Hasler) (episode 49)
Vindication Swim (2024) tells the story of Mercedes Gleitze, the first British woman to swim the English Channel in 1927. This major accomplishment, however, was soon called into question when another swimmer made a dubious claim to the same feat. To defend her integrity and her legacy, Gleitze...
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The Godfather (1972) (Guest: Steve Koh) (episode 48)
Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972) is widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time. Based on Mario Puzo’s best-selling 1969 novel, The Godfather depicts the rise and legacy of the Corleone family, a fictional Italian-American organized crime family led by Vito Corleone and…
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No Other Land (2024) (Palestinian-Israeli) (Guests: Omer Bartov & Lisa Hajjar) (episode 47)
No Other Land (2024) is the Oscar-winning documentary that shows the brutal destruction of a Palestinian community in the occupied West Bank. Recorded between 2019 to 2023, the film tells the story of Basel Adra, a young Palestinian activist, who has been protesting the Israeli army’s destruction...
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The Return of Martin Guerre (1982) (France) (Guest: Joseph Dellapenna) (episode 46)
The Return of Martin Guerre is a 1982 French historical drama directed by Daniel Vigne and staring Gerard Depardieu. The film describes the historical case of Martin Guerre who leaves his young wife Bertrande (Nathalie Baye) in the small French village of Artigat to fight in a war and travel....
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The Conformist (1970) (Guest: Aziz Huq) (episode 45)
This episode examines The Conformist, Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1970 political drama set in 1930s Italy. The film centers on Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a mid-level Fascist functionary who is ordered to assassinate his former professor, an anti-fascist dissident living in Paris. The...
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Dark Waters (2019) (Guest: Mark Templeton) (episode 44)
Dark Waters (2019), directed by Todd Haynes, tells the real-life story of how a lawyer, Rob Bilott (Mark Ruffalo), waged a twenty-year battle to hold the DuPont corporation accountable for contaminating a local water supply with carcinogenic chemicals that poisoned tens of thousands of people....
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I Just Didn't Do It (2007) (Guest: Naoko Akimoto) (episode 43)
This episode examines I Just Didn’t Do It, a 2007 Japanese film written and directed by Masayuki Suo. In the film, 26-year-old Teppei Kaneko (played by Ryo Kase) is traveling to a job interview on a packed Tokyo commuter train when a 15-year-old school girl, who was standing in front of him on…
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On the Waterfront (1954) (Guest: Warren Scharf) (episode 42)
This episode looks at On the Waterfront, the celebrated 1954 American film directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg. The film stars Marlon Brando as the ex-prize fighter turned New Jersey longshoreman Terry Malloy. Malloy struggles to stand up to mob-affiliated union boss Johnny...
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Ali (2001) (Guest: Dave Zirin) (episode 41)
Muhammad Ali is widely recognized as one of the greatest athletes of all-time and one of the most important figures of the 20th century. In addition to his long and celebrated career as a boxer and three-time heavyweight champion of the world, Ali changed the conversation about race, religion…
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Syriana (2005) (Guest: Peggy McGuinness) (episode 40)
Syriana is a 2005 geopolitical thriller written and directed by Stephen Gaghan, based loosely on former CIA case officer Robert Baer’s memoir, See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism. The film weaves together multiple storylines that involve a CIA agent, a…
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The Goldman Case (2023) (Guest: Fred Davis) (episode 39)
The Goldman Case (Le Procès Goldman) (2023), is a French courtroom drama based on the real-life 1976 trial of Pierre Goldman, a far-left Jewish militant who was accused of multiple armed robberies and four murders during a holdup of a pharmacy in Paris. The film, which was directed by Cedric Kahn...
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Mr. Untouchable (2007) (Guest: Robert B. Fiske) (episode 38)
Mr. Untouchable, a 2007 documentary directed by Marc Levin, describes the rise and fall of former New York City drug kingpin, Leroy (“Nicky”) Barnes. In the early 1970s, Barnes formed “The Council,” an organized crime syndicate that controlled a significant part of the heroin trade in Harlem....
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First They Killed My Father (2017) and The Gate (2014) (Guest: Melanie O'Brien) (episode 37)
This episode looks at two films about the Cambodian genocide of the 1970s: First They Killed My Father (dir. Angelina Jolie), and The Gate (or Les Temps des Aveux) (dir. Régis Wargnier). First They Killed My Father is based on the memoir of Loung Ung, who was a five-year-old girl when the Khmer...
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Matewan (1989) (Guest: Fred B. Jacob) (episode 36)
Matewan (written and directed by John Sayles) dramatizes the events of the Battle of Matewan, a coal miners’ strike in 1920 in a small town in the hills of West Virginia. In the film, Joe Kenehan (Chris Cooper, in his film debut), an ex-Wobbly organizer for the United Mine Workers (also known as...
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Minamata: The Victims and Their World (1971) & Minamata (2020) (Guest: Darryl Flaherty) (episode 35)
This episode looks at two films that examine the environmental disaster in Minamata, Japan: Noriaki Tsuchimoto’s documentary, Minamata: The Victims and the World (1971), and Andre Levitas’s Minamata (2020), a Hollywood feature film that tells the story through the famous American photographer, W....
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Black Hawk Down (Guest: Greg Fox) (episode 34)
Black Hawk Down (2001) describes the plight of the U.S. crew of a Black Hawk helicopter that is shot down during the Battle of Mogadishu during the civil war in Somalia in October 1993. The battle resulted in the death of 18 American soldiers and hundreds of Somalis; it also prompted the U.S....
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A Separation (Iran) (2011) (Guest: Golbarg Rekabtalaei) (episode 33)
A Separation (2011) is an Iranian drama written and directed by Asghar Farhadi. The film depicts the martial separation between a middle-class couple, Nadar (Peyman Moaadi) and his wife Simin (Leila Hatami). Simin wants the family to leave Iran to make a better life for their 10-year-old daughter...
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Bridge of Spies (Guests: Lenni Benson & Jeffrey Kahn) (episode 32)
This episode explores Bridge of Spies (2015), the Cold War legal and political thriller directed by Steven Spielberg (and written by Matt Charman, Ethan Coen, and Joel Coen). The film is based on the true story of American attorney James Donovan, who is assigned to represent Soviet spy Rudolf…
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Chinatown (1974) (Guest: John Walton) (episode 31)
Chinatown (1974) is a neo-noir crime thriller, directed by Roman Polanski from a screenplay by Robert Towne. Based loosely on the Owens Valley water wars in Los Angeles from the early twentieth century, the film follows private investigator J.J. (“Jake”) Gittes (Jack Nicholson) as he pursues a...
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The Verdict (1982) (Guest: John "Rusty" Wing) (episode 30)
The Verdict (1982) tells the story of down-on-his-luck Boston lawyer, Frank Galvin (Paul Newman). Galvin had been a rising star until he was framed for jury tampering by a partner at his elite Boston law firm because he planned to expose the firm's illegalities. Galvin left the firm and his...
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Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) (Guest: Alka Pradhan) (episode 29)
Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) centers on the plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I of England, the arrest and execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (Elizabeth’s cousin), and King Phillip II of Spain’s attempt to topple Elizabeth and install a Catholic monarch on the English throne, which…
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The Sweet Hereafter (1997) (Guest: Seán Patrick Donlan) (episode 28)
This episode explores Atom Egoyan's 1997 film, The Sweet Hereafter, which describes the impact of a tragic school bus accident that caused the death of 14 children on a small Canadian town. The film is based on Russell Banks’ 1991 novel of the same name (which in turn was based on a real-life bus...
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Absence of Malice (1981) (Guest: Brian Hauss) (episode 27)
This episode examines Absence of Malice, a 1981 drama directed by Sidney Pollack. After Miami-based newspaper reporter Megan Carter (Sally Field) is tipped off by Justice Department organized crime strike force chief Elliot Rosen (Bob Balaban) about a criminal investigation into the disappearance...
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Inherit the Wind (1960) (Guest Nell Minow) (episode 26)
Inherit the Wind (1960) is a fictionalized account of the 1925 Scopes “Monkey Trial," where a local teacher is prosecuted for teaching about human evolution in public school in violation of state law. The film was directed by Stanley Kramer and is based on a play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert…
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The Caine Mutiny (1954) & The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (2023) (Guest: Gene Fidell) (episode 25)
The Caine Mutiny (1954) is based on Herman Wouk’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name. The film, directed by Edward Dmytryk and produced by Stanley Kramer, portrays the fictitious events on board the U.S.S. Caine, a Navy destroyer-minesweeper in the Pacific during World War II. Lt....
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Miracle on 34th Street and Top Law Movies List (Guest: Ashley Merryman) (episode 24)
This episode looks at “Law Films You Won't Want to Miss,” a recent list of "the most captivating legal themed movies," published in U.S. News and World Report. Which movies are on the list? Which didn't make the cut? And what does the list tell us about “law movies”—and of great law movies? One...
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Eight Men Out (1988) (Guests: Robert Boland and Brett Kaufman) (episode 23)
Eight Men Out (1988) is a dramatization of professional baseball’s infamous Black Sox scandal, in which eight members of the Chicago White Sox conspired with gamblers to intentionally lose the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. The film, which was directed by John Sayles, is based on Eliot...
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Anatomy of a Fall (France) (Guests: Fred Davis and Sam Bettwy) (episode 22)
Anatomy of a Fall (2023) is an acclaimed French drama directed by Justine Triet, from a screenplay she co-wrote with her real-life partner, Arthur Harari. The movie centers on the criminal trial of a writer (Sandra Hüeller) who is accused of killing her husband (Samuel Maleski) in a small town in...
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Killers of the Flower Moon (Guest: Wilson Pipestem) (episode 21)
Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) describes the series of murders of members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma in the early 1920s. Because tribal members retained mineral rights on their reservation, they became extraordinarily wealthy after oil was discovered on tribal land. This leads a corrupt...
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Oppenheimer (Guest: Audra Wolfe) (episode 20)
Oppenheimer (2023) stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American theoretical physicist known as the “father of the atomic bomb” for his role as director of the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II . The film was written and directed by Christopher Nolan, based on the book,...
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Eye in the Sky (Guest: Craig Martin) (episode 19)
Eye in the Sky (2015), directed by Gavin Hood from a script by Guy Hibbert, depicts the operation of a multinational team aimed at high-level operatives from the Al-Shabaab terrorist group in Nairobi, Kenya. When the British army learns of the location of the suspects, it plans to capture them.…
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Norma Rae (Guest: Fred B. Jacob) (episode 18)
Norma Rae (1979) describes the struggle of Norma Rae Webster (Sally Field), a factory worker with limited education, to unionize a textile mill in North Carolina. The film was directed by Martin Ritt from a screenplay by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr., and is based on the true story of...
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A Civil Action (Guest: Jennifer Corinis) (episode 17)
A Civil Action (1998) is based on Jonathan Harr’s critically acclaimed book of the same name. Written and directed by Steve Zaillian, the film starts John Travolta, and features supporting performances by Robert Duvall (who was nominated for an Oscar), William H. Macy, James Gandolfini, John...
About this show
Law on Film explores the rich connections between law and film. Law is critical to many films, even to those that are not obviously about the legal world. Film, meanwhile, tells us a lot about the law, especially how it is perceived and portrayed. The podcast is created and hosted by Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer, legal scholar, and film buff. Each episode, Jonathan and a guest expert will examine a film that is noteworthy from a legal perspective. What does the film get right about the law and what does it get wrong? Why is law important to understanding the film? And what does the film teach about law's relationship to the larger society and culture that surrounds it. Whether you're interested in law, film, or an entertaining discussion, there will be something here for you.
Hosted by
Jonathan Hafetz