Shoshana: 'Lacklustre' biopic takes a stab at British Mandate era

"The British role in Palestine is complicated…but I don't think it helps anyone to ignore history," Michael Winterbottom said during an interview late last year to promote his new film, Shoshana. "Especially when that history is something that is still very active and alive today, it has huge direct consequences."

It's an admirable position for a British filmmaker working in an industry more willing to produce films about Britain's heroic past during World War II than its contentious, colonial role in creating fractures and fissures across the SWANA region.

Shoshana, written by Winterbottom, Laurence Coriat (McMafia) and Paul Viragh, is inspired by true events and set in British Mandatory Palestine several years after the Balfour Declaration, which supported Zionist efforts to establish a "national home for the Jewish people" in the Palestinian-Arab-majority land.

"Shoshana doesn't quite put the thrill in "thriller" and gives its eponymous lead a lacklustre romantic biopic format that sidelines her in what is meant to be her own story"

When it comes to Israel's continuing occupation of Palestine – which, according to Oxfam, has seen Israeli military kill 250 Palestinians per day since the Hamas' October 7 attack – it's more vital than ever to cement into cinematic history that Palestine was not "a land without a people" when Jewish immigrants were given tacit endorsement to claim it as their own.

Yet Winterbottom only offers the British and Jewish perspectives on this lesser-told period of British colonial history. Arabs are kept on the periphery as merely victims or agitators which wouldn't be as frustrating if the political thriller, set mostly in 1930s Tel Aviv, made good on its titular promise to zoom in on Shoshana Borochov.

Confidently played by Russian actor Irina Starshenbau, Shoshana is a European immigrant and journalist working for a Hebrew-language newspaper. She is also the daughter of the late Ber Borochov, a Russian-Jewish founder of Marxist Zionism which believed in Arabs and Jews living side-by-side in peace in Palestine.

It's that background that positions her as progressive compared to the more militant Jewish figures in the film, even though she is a member of the underground territorial defence force Haganah.

She embarks on a controversial relationship with British police investigator Thomas Wilkin (Douglas Booth). Their on-again-off-again relationship is mostly plotted by some rudimentary sex scenes and a few political and cultural disagreements, mostly over Jewish sovereignty to create the State of Israel and British interference in that goal. But that romance, as well as Shoshana's journey, is secondary to the central plot of Wilkins and fellow British police officer Geoffrey Morton (Melling) to locate Zionist militant Avraham Stern (Aury Alby).

Zionist violence in British Mandate Palestine

Stern's organisation Irgun, the most militant group advocating for a Jewish state in Palestine, is carrying out devastating bombings against the Arab community and British forces, using newly invented bombing methods.

It's a disturbing sight to see the Arab victims in the aftermath of these attacks, especially those whose limbs have been blown off. It hints at a narrative nod to present-day Israel's leading position as a global arms manufacturer while recognising that Arabs were not solely responsible for terrorism during that period.

"As much as the film recognises the irony of Europeans calling themselves native to the region, there is admittedly, a lack of acknowledgement of the Middle Eastern and North African Jews also looking to have their utopian dreams of a Jewish state realised"

It also showcases the differing approaches to dissent by the British occupying force towards Arabs and Jews.

Morton is a newish recruit to the British Palestine Police Force, originally assigned to the Arab villages around Jenin to quell any rebellious uprisings.

Melling plays him with a cold-blooded air of superiority; it is illegal for Arabs or Jews to bear arms but while Morton uses torture, intimidation and execution to successfully scare the Arabs into submission, Tel Aviv-based Tom Wilkins takes a far more liberal approach.

Booth looks like the matinee idol but doesn't quite deliver on the increasing turmoil of Wilkins grappling with his position as an occupying authority in the Jewish community he is surveilling.

Wilkins's perceived leniency and fondness for Shoshana and his Jewish neighbours has his superiors questioning his loyalties as well as his ability to stop Irgun's terror campaign. Morton is brought in to take control of the manhunt and most of the two-hour runtime is dedicated to this cat-and-mouse chase.

Some of these scenes are nervy; Irgun members run around Tel Aviv setting off bombs and avoiding capture while an anxiety-ridden Irgun informant betrays his people to Morton.

His iron-fisted methods and use of extortion tactics ultimately create more friction between the British and the more British-friendly Jewish population. Other moments show the complexity of a period when Jewish militants were fighting against an occupying force for a land they were not born to.

An interrogation scene between Stern, Morton and Wilkins articulates this point plainly when the Militant leader refers to them as "foreigners" and Morton reminds Stern he was born in Poland.

Whitewashed

As much as the film recognises the irony of Europeans calling themselves native to the region, there is admittedly, a lack of acknowledgement of the Middle Eastern and North African Jews also looking to have their utopian dreams of a Jewish state realised.

There's a lot of nuance and intricacy to contend with while exploring the early Zionist movement, and Winterbottom does a somewhat apt job of presenting the political violence that paved the way for Israel to become the settler colonial state it is today. But Shoshana doesn't quite put the thrill in "thriller" and gives its eponymous lead a lacklustre romantic biopic format that sidelines her in what is meant to be her own story. 

Hanna Flint is a film and TV critic, writer and author of Strong Female Character with bylines at Empire, Time Out, Elle, Town & Country, the Guardian, BBC Culture and IGN

Follow her here: @HannaFlint