Jefferson in Paris is a 1995 Franco-American historical drama film, directed by James Ivory, and previously entitled Head and Heart. The screenplay, by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, is a semi-fictional account of Thomas Jefferson's tenure as the Ambassador of the United States to France before his Presidency and of his alleged relationships with British artist Maria Cosway and his slave, Sally Hemings.
It was the first portrayal in film of Sally Hemings, and at the time some mainstream historians disputed Jefferson's relationship with her. Since then a 1998 DNA study found a match between the male lines of Jefferson and Hemings descendants, and the historic consensus has shifted to acknowledging that Jefferson likely had a nearly 40-year liaison with Hemings and was the father of all her children, four of whom survived and were freed.
