The case brought against Menahem Mendel Beilis in Kiev in 1913 for the ritual murder of a young Christian was entirely set up by the Tsarist regime. Beilis’s innocence was acknowledged only at the end of a long battle. Along with the Dreyfus Affair, the Beilis case was symptomatic of the anti-Semitic atmosphere at the turn of the century and caused a stir around the world. Made in Kiev with actors from the Solovtsov Theater, the film is based on the Krassovsky’s revelations that demonstrated Beilis’s innocence andVera Cheberyak’s guilt. An earlier film was made in 1912 by cameraman V. Dobrjanski for the manager of the “L’Express” theater in Kiev. The following year in Kiev, an early attempt at reconstructing the story was made with Joseph Soiffer, who starred as the murderer, and the actors of the Solovtsov Theater. The film was shown secretly in the “Pale of Settlement” and sold abroad. It was only after February 1917, with the end of Tsarist censorship and restrictions imposed on Jews, that a third film could be made, this time by Nikolai Breshko-Breshkovsky, who reused the screenplay and the actors from the previous film. The film was not well received, at least in Moscow, where it was removed from theaters.