Shoshana (film)

Shoshana is a 2023 British biographical thriller film directed by Michael Winterbottom.

The film is set in 1930s/1940s British Mandatory Palestine and follows the tragic love story of Shoshana Borochov (Irina Starshenbaum), daughter of one of the founders of socialist Zionism, and British police officer Tom Wilkin (Douglas Booth), while Wilkin and fellow police officer Geoffrey J. Morton (Harry Melling) hunt for Zionist militant Avraham Stern (Aury Alby).

Cast

 * Douglas Booth as Tom Wilkin
 * Irina Starshenbaum as Shoshana Borochov
 * Harry Melling as Geoffrey J. Morton
 * Aury Alby as Avraham Stern
 * Ian Hart

Production
Winterbottom developed the film for many years. In 2010, Jim Sturgess, Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen were announced as its stars. While the film never entered production in 2010, Winterbottom did shoot documentary footage in Israel at the time with surviving participants in the events.

Filming began in October 2021 in the town of Ostuni in Italy, which doubled for Tel Aviv.

The screenplay was written by Winterbottom, Laurence Coriat and Paul Viragh.

Release
The film had its world premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. It was released by Altitude Film Distribution on 23 February 2024 in the UK. It will be released in the US by Greenwich Entertainment later in 2024.

Reception
The movie received a generally positive critical reception, holding a 70% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 27 reviews. Ellen E. Jones gave the film four out of five stars in her review in The Observer. Jones described the film as "intelligent and compelling", continuing to praise it for "giving valuable insight into the variance of opinion within the era’s Zionist movement." Film critic Mark Kermode also praised the film: "The fact that most of what the story tells us is actually true, I think gives it a kind of a real sense of bite that this relationship does become a microcosm of a much wider conflict." John Nathan of The Jewish Chronicle wrote "Winterbottom deserves credit for conveying complexity on a subject where fervently held opinion much prefers simplicity." However, Nathan criticised the film for doing "nothing to reflect the huge proportion of modern Israel’s population that originates in the Middle East and Africa." Hannah Brown of The Jerusalem Post felt that the scope of the story and setting was better suited to a miniseries format: "But somehow, the wide canvas here doesn’t present a satisfying picture, despite the echoes of the conflict that continue till today. I almost wished this were a mini-series rather than a movie, so each character could be developed further. Tel Aviv of this era was so complex, that it defeats this attempt to tell its story in two hours."