Film Review — Shoshana
Michael Winterbottom’s semi-factual romantic political thriller in British Mandate Tel Aviv proves powerful, taut, and timely
Those unfamiliar with the history of how the modern state of Israel came into being could do worse as a starting point that Michael Winterbottom’s new film Shoshana. Set in British Mandate Tel Aviv between 1938 and 1948, the political turmoil of the time provides a fascinating backdrop to a quietly compelling love story, between a pragmatic British Intelligence Officer posted in Mandatory Palestine, Tom Wilkin (Douglas Booth) and an idealistic young Jewish woman, the titular Shoshana Borochov (Irina Starshenbaum).
Shoshana is a journalist mingling with Tel Aviv high society, excitedly dreaming of the utopian ideal of Israel, a land that her dead father believed both Jews and Arabs could work together to make a paradise. She belongs to a socialist subset of Zionism that doesn’t condone violent resistance against their British overlords, instead believing they will eventually leave of their own accord. At the opposite end of the spectrum, militant Zionist group Irgun are causing chaos. The British are determined not to show favouritism to either Jewish or Arab resistance groups, so are ruthless with both (the British, quite rightly, do not come out of this story well).
