The film “The Operative” directed by Yuval Adler, which tells the story of the presence of an Israeli female spy in Tehran to gather information about Iran’s nuclear program and also transfer explosives to Iran, is being shown in the European cinemas in these days.
Faraan: Screened at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, the film is about a romantic relationship between Rachel (Israeli spy) starring German-American actor Diane Kruger and Farhad (director of an Iranian nuclear-related electronics company) starring Iranian-Canadian actor Cas Anvar.
As a Mossad spy and under the auspices of an English teacher in Tehran, Rachel approaches Farhad in order to pass on his company’s information to her Mossad bosses.
The film, “The Operative”, shows that during Rachel’s mission as an Israeli spy, innocent people are killed in Iran, and in one scene, Farhad talks about the bombing and killing of officials and their children.
The film does not contain a negative view of Iran, and on the contrary, in various scenes, it depicts a negative image of the behavior of the Israeli spies, the bombing and killing of innocent people, as well as the murder of Farhad electronic company’s guard by Rachel.
Yuval Adler trailer has been poorly evaluated by critics. The Guardian newspaper has criticized it as a chaotic film.
In an interview, Yuval Adler, the Israeli director of the film – The Operative – says, “The film is not really about Mossad or Israel, but about a woman who is hired by an intelligence agency. It is more about the concept of ‘espionage’, which I find very interesting. On a deeper level, the film is about people who do not know where they are in the world, and this is a common feeling between me and Diane Kruger. “I am an Israeli but I have spent most of my life in New York and I am not sure where I belong.”
The director of the film says that his goal was to create a kind of a “random spy”, not someone who is ideologically committed to Israel or is religiously Jewish.
Leading actor, Diane Kruger, says she loves the film – The Operative – because Yuval Adler decided to take a psychological look at the lives of spies.
“Diane Kruger, who has spent two weeks with real Mossad spies in Tel Aviv in order to better understand the behavior of a spy, says: “The Mossad spies gave me small missions, such as entering a government building in Tel Aviv with a fake ID, or entering a building and then being able to enter one of the apartments and reach the balcony of the apartment without knowing the occupants of the apartment.”
The film is based on the novel “The English Teacher” written by Yiftach Reicher Atir, a former Mossad agent.
One of the controversial points about this film is the shooting of parts of it in Tehran. The director of the film said that his attempt to get official permission to film in Tehran failed, so he contacted people in Tehran to film and did not tell them what projects he wanted to film so as not to endanger their safety.
The film crew in Tehran was told they were working for a company in Belgium. Yuval Adler said he contacted the film crew via iPhone and was instructing them in regards to making the film.
This has provoked a backlash from the conservatives in Tehran in recent months. The Kayhan newspaper wrote: “It seems that with the revelation of this kind of anti-Iranian filmmaking in the country, now the security and law enforcement agencies, as well as those in charge of culture and art, and especially the people of cinema and media, should be more careful. Perhaps those who are filming for some foreign networks or festivals or institutions in other countries may be consciously or unconsciously part of the puzzle of the anti-Iranian plans of the Western intelligence services.”
