‘Shoshana' Review: Love Amid Conflict

New York Times

24-07-2025

Shoshana Borochov (Irina Starshenbaum), the title character of 'Shoshana,' is the daughter of a Russian Jewish socialist who, we are told, believed that Arabs and Jews could create a new state together in Palestine. In 1938, when the story proper begins — the film opens with a newsreel-style prologue that briskly recaps the previous 40 years — that dream is still on her mind.
But the reality of life in Tel Aviv is complicated, especially for Shoshana, who is romantically involved with a British police officer, Tom Wilkin (Douglas Booth). His sympathies appear to lean toward the Zionist cause, but his job is to remain neutral, and to keep arms out of the hands of both Jews and Arabs.
Whether the couple's relationship can survive — or whether their personal lives and public convictions will prove irreconcilable — forms the narrative spine of this historical drama, directed by the British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom from a script credited to him, Laurence Coriat and Paul Viragh. Shoshana and Tom, like many of the main characters, were real people, but the film is a fictionalization, taking liberties that undoubtedly help with suspense and economy.
The movie had its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2023, before the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent war in Gaza. Even with a belated release, the film's timing is hardly ideal. A steady stream of headlines from the region means that the nearly century-old factionalism of the Zionist underground is likely to be far from viewers' current concerns. Much of the narrative backdrop involves the split among the Haganah, the militant group that preferred dealing with the British politically; the Irgun, which favored violent attacks against British rule; and eventually Lehi, an Irgun offshoot led by Avraham Stern (Aury Alby), an extremist whose capture becomes a driving goal of Tom's division.
Like Otto Preminger's film version of 'Exodus' (1960), 'Shoshana' largely sidelines Arab characters, who are principally used to show a British villain's ostensible evenhandedness. In an early scene, Tom's principal antagonist, Geoffrey Morton (Harry Melling), uses the threat of execution to trick a group of Arab men into revealing a stash of weapons. Geoffrey, played by Melling as a worm whose professed interest in treating Jews and Arabs equally under the law is belied by his casual malice against both, is promoted to be Tom's superior, perhaps because Tom is too friendly with Haganah sympathizers in Tel Aviv.
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