Germany and Israel, dangerous games

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Fifty years after the attack on the Olympic village in 1972, in which 17 people died, a friendly was organized between Bayern Munich and Halutzi Tel Aviv, to commemorate the victims and reaffirm the friendship between Germany and Israel. Munich games is one spy-thriller enjoyable as long as you accept this unlikely premise, or that it may have seemed like a good idea to some to provide the perfect opportunity for all the terrorists in the world. The cancellation of the game, which over the course of the six episodes is feared several times as if it were a disaster, does not seem a big enough stake for those on the other side of the screen.

And yet the dramatic construction is effective: the story is framed in a countdown of the days missing from the event, and structured around the collaboration between an Israeli intelligence agent, specializing in computer science (Oren Simon, played by Yousef Sweid) and a German police detective, of Palestinian origin, expert in potential terrorist cells in the area (Maria Köhler, played by the charming Seyneb Saleh).

The encounter / clash between Oren and Maria dramatizes an ethical conflict on how the terrorist threat should be faced, between the contempt for human rights, shown by Israeli agents and respect for the laws of the German counterpart, at the risk of ineffectiveness.

Israeli-German collaboration, on the other hand, was already in production: Munich games was written by Israeli screenwriter Michal Aviram, author of the acclaimed Faudaand entirely shot by Philipp Kadelbach (We, the guys from the Berlin zoo). Although set entirely in Munich, the series courageously chooses a multilingual approach, whereby it continually switches from German to Hebrew, from Arabic to English.

Kadelbach’s direction is sober and functional, based on the stylistic features of the genre crime but without mannerisms, careful mainly to enhance the excellent writing of Aviram. Beyond a few cliche and a protagonist perhaps a little too perfect, the series increases the tension from episode to episode, between false leads and sudden revelations, to arrive at a good ending, unexpected and ambiguous.