Israeli Mossad agents are after the “Surgeon of Birkenau” in THE DEBT
THE DEBT (HAHOV) (Assaf Bernstein, 2007)
JCC in Manhattan
334 Amsterdam Ave. at 76th St.
Tuesday, September 20, $11, 7:30
646-505-5708
www.jccmanhattan.org
www.thedebt-movie.com
Following a launch party for her book about how she and two fellow Mossad agents in 1964 captured and killed Max Reiner (Edgar Selge), the notorious “Surgeon of Birkenau,” Rachel Brener (Gila Almagor) immediately learns that there is an old man in a Ukrainian nursing home claiming that he is in fact the doctor who performed horrific experiments on Jewish men, women, and children in the German concentration camp during World War II. Rachel is reunited with Zvi (Alex Peleg) and Ehud (Oded Teomi), who come up with a plan to eliminate the doctor once again to protect a secret that has been haunting them for forty years. But they’re no longer the brash, finely chiseled spies they were when they were young, leading to crises of conscience and other physical and psychological dilemmas. Nominated for four Israeli Academy Awards, The Debt is a tense thriller from director Assaf Bernstein, who cowrote the screenplay with Ido Rosenblum. The story weaves back and forth between the present day, as Rachel meets Ehud in Ukraine and they hash out their plan, neither one having done anything like this in decades, and 1964, when Rachel (Neta Garty), Zvi (Itay Tiran), and Ehud (Yehezkel Lazarov) were younger and more idealistic. The scenes in which the young Rachel visits the doctor, who has become a gynecologist, and pretends she is trying to conceive a child are particularly gripping, setting up a powerful conclusion. With the release of John Madden’s American remake starring Helen Mirren, Ciarán Hinds, Sam Worthington, Jessica Chastain, and Tom Wilkinson, the Israeli original, which evokes such films as The Wild Geese, The Boys from Brazil, and QB VII, is screening Tuesday night at the JCC in Manhattan.