Meragel Ha-Shampaniya

The Champagne Spy", (Israel, RT 91 minutes), by Nadav Schirman. Viewed at the Seattle Int'l Film Festival, SIFF, 2007. An Israeli secret agent poses as a Nazi in Egypt and so completely fuses with his cover identity that he finds it impossible to adjust to real life and return to his family when his mission is completed. The career of the champagne spy (so called because of the high society playboy life he led during his espionage years) is seen primarily through the eyes of his son, now himself a middle aged man, who recounts the pain he went through knowing so little about his father and the double life he led. This story is really much more about the effect of the agent's double life on his family than on the ins and outs of espionage itself. With a few changes it could easily be a fiction film and nobody would be the wiser. Says director Schirman, "When I was making it I kept feeling that this was much more of a drama than a straight documentary. With this I think I'm through making documentaries. My next film will be a feature drama." The film screens next at the Los Angeles Film Festiva and VARIETY reports that "Collina Films has signed writer-director Nadav Schirman to pen an English-language adaptation of his documentary "The Champagne Spy." -- Mazel Tov! – but do we really need an "English version?