Less than two decades after Nazi Germany went down to defeat in World War II, the National Socialist Movement, a British neo-Nazi party headquartered in London, garnered notoriety through rallies, marches and antisemitic attacks. Ridley Road, a four-part BBC Masterpiece series being presented by the PBS network every Sunday until May 22, skillfully resurrects this […]
Before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shot to international stardom as the charismatic leader of a besieged nation invaded by its Russian neighbor, he was a comedian who starred in Servant of the People, a popular television series in Ukraine made by his production company. Currently available on Netflix, this amusing sitcom is a remarkable case […]
Shimon Hayut, alias Simon Leviev and David Sharon, is a notorious swindler. Posing as the son of a prominent Israeli diamond dealer, he wormed himself into the lives of guillable single European women and cheated them out of millions of dollars in what can only be described as a romantic Ponzi scheme. Hayut’s career as […]
My Best Friend Anne Frank, a Dutch film being streamed on Netflix, offers insights into the best-known victim of the Holocaust. Hannah Goslar was Anne’s closest friend. Like Anne, she was a German Jew whose family had been forced out of Nazi Germany and had resettled in Holland. In Ben Sombogaart’s one-hour-and-forty-three minute film, which […]
Munich: The Edge of War transports viewers into the realm of the imagination, asking them to imagine two “what if” moments in European history. What if Britain and France had steadfastly resisted German aggression and refused to hand over the Sudetenland on a silver platter to Adolf Hitler? And what might have happened in Europe had […]
Several years before the Israeli television drama Shtisel took Israel by storm, Srugim was drawing in a multitude of viewers. Shtisel and Srugim ran from 2013 until 2021 and from 2008 until 2012 respectively. They unfolded in Jerusalem and were about the everyday lives of religiously observant Israelis. While Shtisel’s main characters were ultra-Orthodox Jews, Srugim […]
Four new episodes have been added to The Club, the Turkish telenovela currently streaming on Netflix. There has been no word as yet whether additional ones are in the works. The first few minutes of the newest episode unfold in 1942, when the Turkish government imposed a demonstrably unfair wealth tax on Christians and Jews. […]
World War II was a titanic struggle that raged on land, the high seas and in the air. Its battles unfolded in Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific. They were voluminously documented by an armada of expert cinematographers, judging by World War II in Color: Road To Victory, which is currently being streamed on Netflix. […]
The Girl From Oslo, an Israeli-Norwegian co-production currently streaming on Netflix, is a topical thriller set in Jerusalem, the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip and Oslo. Unfolding in English, Hebrew, Norwegian and Arabic in ten episodes of about 30 minutes each, it is both thoughtful and entertaining, a fairly rare combination in television dramas. Revolving around […]
The Club, a six-part Turkish Netflix drama set in Istanbul during the 1940s and 1950s, portrays Turkey’s Jewish minority soberly and frankly. It highlights the positive and exposes the negative, providing viewers with a reasonably nuanced picture of Jews in a Muslim society. Matilda Aseo (Gokce Bahadir), the main character, is a Sephardi Jew whose […]