Season 04

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  Episode 48: The Godfather (1972) (Guest: Steve Koh)

  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 the transformation of his son Michael from a reluctant outsider to a ruthless mafia boss. The film, which features an ensemble cast of American film icons, including Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duval, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, and John Cazale, explores themes ... Read More
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  Episode 49: Vindication Swim (2024) (Guest: Elliot Hasler)

  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 (Kirsten Callaghan) attempted what she called her “vindication swim” — a second crossing of the English Channel intended to silence her critics and restore her reputation. Vindication Swim is about more than an athletic feat. It also raises timeless questions of proof, reputation, ... Read More
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  Episode 50: Juror #2 (2024) (Guest: Frank Wohl)

  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 Nicholas Hoult) soon realizes that the wrong man is on trial—as he hears the evidence, Kemp figures out that he, and not the defendant, killed the victim. Kemp realizes that he accidentally hit the defendant’s girlfriend with his ... Read More
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  Episode 51: An Officer and a Spy (2019) (Guest: William Schabas)

  An Officer and a Spy (J’accuse in French) is director 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 world. The Dreyfus Affair centered around the military trial of Captain Alfred Dreyfus on charges of treason. Wrongly convicted based on secret evidence and false information, Dreyfus’s case would become a cause célèbres and synonymous with a miscarriage of justice. It also exposed and exacerbated ... Read More
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  Episode 52: I’m Still Here (2024) (Guest: Isabela Amaral)

  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. Their lives are forever altered when the military government arrests and disappears Rubens. The film describes Eunice’s attempt to find out what happened to Rubens and to rebuild her life and raise her family in his absence. The film is based ... Read More
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  Episode 53: Inglourious Basterds (2009) (Guest: Renana Keydar)

  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 terrorize Nazis. The other involves Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent), a young Jewish woman who narrowly escapes death at the hands of notorious “Jew hunter” Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) and flees to Paris where she runs a cinema under a false identity. The plot lines converge at ... Read More
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  Episode 54: Conclave (2024) (Guest: Monsignor Raymond Kupke)

  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 the 2016 novel by Robert Harris), and features an all-star cast including Fiennes, John Lithgow, Stanley Tucci, and Isabella Rossellini. The film provides a window into the process for electing a new pope, along with the legal, historical, and political ... Read More
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  Episode 55: The Killing Fields (1984) (Guest: Alexandra Meise)

  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 Cambodian journalist Dith Pran (Haing S. Ngor). It provides a haunting depiction of mass violence as well as a moving story about these two colleagues and friends. In the wake of the 50th anniversary of the Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia, it is worth ... Read More
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  Episode 56: The Lives of Others (2006) (Guest: Mark Drumbl and Barbora Hola)

  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 examines how law can be co-opted into an instrument of domination, how bureaucratic routines of “security” normalize repression, and how small acts of resistance acquire profound moral weight under systems built on fear and an extensive system of informers. The Lives of Others raises enduring questions about the ethics of observing ... Read More
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  Episode 57: Small Things Like These (2024) (Guest: Sean Patrick Donlan)

  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 about the Magdalene laundries—the abusive asylums run by Roman Catholic institutions from the 1820s until 1996. During this period, thousands of girls and women were imprisoned, forced to carry out unpaid labor and subjected to severe psychological and physical maltreatment. Furlong’s discovery about the ... Read More
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  Episode 58: My Undesirable Friends: Part I—Last Air in Moscow (2024) (Guest: Rachel Denber and Anna Nemzer)

  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 invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The documentary provides an intimate portrait of independent Russian journalists—mainly young women—who risk everything to pursue truth and accountability amidst escalating repression under the Putin regime. Filmed in late 2021 and early 2022, the documentary captures how the legal machinery of ... Read More
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  Episode 59: Monster (2003) (Guest: Mara Malagodi)

  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 Serial Killer (1992) and Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003)—alongside the feature film Monster (2003), written and directed by Patty Jenkins and starring Charlize Theron in an Oscar-winning role. Broomfield’s documentaries are less about guilt or innocence than about process: who controls the ... Read More
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  Episode 60: Erin Brockovich (2000) (Guest: Dror Ladin)

  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 in Hinkley, California. The film, which features an Oscar-winning performance by Julia Roberts in the title role, explores the role of lawsuits in exposing truth and gaining compensation for victims, the gendered dynamics of legal advocacy, and the challenges of taking on entrenched power structures in society. ... Read More
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  Episode 61: Blade Runner & Blade Runner 2049 (Guest: Frank Pasquale)

  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 dystopia where “replicants”—bio-engineered beings—fight for recognition, identity, and life itself. Denis Villeneuve’s 2017 sequel deepens that vision. Law operates in the shadows across both films: as surveillance, classification, and control. The “blade runners” themselves enforce a form of administrative violence that exposes the limits of legal personhood. What ... Read More
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  Episode 62: Shadow of a Doubt (1943) (Guest: Daniel Ortiz)

  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 than a single killer on the run. It reveals how charm, respectability, and social status can insulate wrongdoing from scrutiny — and how communities prefer comforting narratives to disruptive truths. The police investigate, but they move hesitantly; the town remains confident in its own innocence. The ... Read More