Jewish Film Festival

The Debt

Nominated for 4 Israeli Academy Awards and called “One of the best Israeli films of the year” by Channel 1 Television in Israel, Assaf Bernstein’s unique psychological cat-and-mouse espionage thriller was a huge box-office hit in its native country.  In 1964, three young Mossad agents are on a mission to capture ‘The Surgeon of Birkenau,” a monstrous Nazi war criminal now working under a false identity as a gynecologist in a small clinic in Berlin.  But when things don’t go as planned, a lie is perpetrated and now, more than 30 years later, they must protect themselves when The Surgeon suddenly resurfaces in the Ukraine, determined to confess his crimes against humanity.  But how do you terminate a man already thought dead, and how do you find redemption for misdeeds of the past?  Handsomely filmed on location and featuring a stellar international cast, THE DEBT already has an English-language remake in the works from Miramax starring Helen Mirren. 

“An intense Israeli thriller that shuttles between the mid-‘60s and the late’90s…capably carried by famed Israeli diva Gila Almagor.”

– Ronnie Scheib

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