False Flag is an absolutely riveting Israeli miniseries that we’ll get to see in the US at some point. The miniseries has 8 episodes (each a taut 45 minutes). The first two episodes are playing together as one ninety-minute program at this year’s San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SJFF36).
As False Flag opens, Israeli television news reports that five Israeli citizens were responsible for the kidnapping of an Iranian diplomat out of his Moscow hotel. We see four of the five – each appearing totally shocked by the revelation and denying any involvement to their families and friends. They don’t seem to know each other, and the only connection seems to be that they each have dual citizenship and a second passport. We first question whether this was a covert operation by Israeli intelligence forces for which they were framed? But we soon learn that the Mossad wasn’t involved either, and Israeli security forces are soon hunting down the five to find out what really happened.
But then we start to learn that some of the five may be connected. Their alibis have holes. And some of the five are not what they seem. Are they involved? Who commissioned the kidnapping? Who is going to find out and how? And what is going to happen to each of the five? False Flag evolves into a superb thriller that spans, at once, the genres of the whodunit, the paranoid thriller, the perfect crime movie and the espionage procedural.
The five protagonists have very different personalities, which makes False Flag a successful character-driven thriller. The three women are a tough cookie, a party girl and a low-self esteemed shoulder-slumper. The two men are a bewildered regular guy and an international man of mystery. The acting from Ishai Golan, Magi Azarzar, Orna Salinger, Ania Bukstein, and Angel Bonnani is first-rate.
False Flag (titled Kfulim in Hebrew) was broadcast last fall in Israel, and was the first non-English language series to be acquired by Fox International Channels. It’s expected sometime in the next year on American TV. The release of the first two episodes at SFJFF36 will help build buzz for the US release.
The Joke was on The Movie Gourmet. When I was going through my screeners for the SFJFF36, I neglected to read anything about False Flag except for “thriller”, so I was expecting that the entire story was contained in the 90 minutes. When what is really Episode 2 ended, I was on the edge of my seat braying, “Oh no! What happens next?”.
You can get your own addicting taste of False Flag at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, where you can see it at CineArts in Palo Alto on July 23, at San Francisco’s Castro on July 30, at the Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theater on July 31, and the Rafael in San Rafael on August 6.