SHOSHANA
MASSACHUSETTS PREMIERE
Set in British Mandatory Palestine, this gripping historical thriller from celebrated British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom (A Mighty Heart), weaves a story of star-crossed love with one of political radicalization and violence. The year is 1938 on the eve of the Second World War, and tensions are high in Tel Aviv where the British control a mixed Arab and Jewish population in Palestine. English police officer Thomas Wilkin (Douglas Booth) and Jewish journalist and activist Shoshana (Irina Starshenbaum), the daughter of Zionist Labor movement co-founder Dov Ber Borochov, are passionately in love. But political unrest is escalating. Avraham Stern (Aury Alby) is leading the Irgun in a deadly campaign against the British authorities, who under the leadership of officer Geoffrey Morton (Harry Melling, The Queen’s Gambit) have unilaterally increased their crackdown on both Jews and Arabs.
Based on real people and events, the film is plotted with surgical precision. Its subtle homage to the noir classic The Third Man makes for great entertainment, but also an insightful portrait of the legacy of British colonialism and political violence.
“While Shoshana ends nearly 80 years ago, the ghosts of that period still haunt us today and the movie weaves a fascinating tapestry of life in Tel Aviv in the late-1930s to the mid-1940s, with its passions, intellectualism, factions, and bloodshed.” — Hannah Brown, The Jerusalem Post
Director: Michael Winterbottom | UK | 2023 | 119 min | English and Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles
