Serie: 6 x 45min
Synopsis
In wartime Amsterdam, a young woman goes to therapy.This is Etty Hillesum.
At 27, driven by a profound desire for life, Etty embarks on a spiritual and emotional journey, all chronicled in her diaries. In them, she unfolds her turbulent love affair with the psycho-chirologist Julius Spier, a relationship that becomes the catalyst for a radical inner transformation—one that deepens as the dangers surrounding her as a Jewish woman intensify, ultimately leading her to an enormous act of solidarity.
Our take
Far more than a simple adaptation of Etty Hillesum’s diaries, which sold millions of copies and were translated into over 20 languages, Etty is a radical television experience. Directed by the visionary Hagai Levi (Scenes from a Marriage, Our Boys, In Treatment), this drama avoids the pitfalls of a standard period piece to embrace a contemporary, minimalist, and deliberately anachronistic esthetic. By establishing a haunting dialogue between the turmoil of 1941-1943 and the echoes of our own time, the series transforms this young Jewish woman’s journey into a compass for the present. Driven by the poignant and at times unsettling performance of breakout star Julia Windischbauer, alongside the commanding Sebastian Koch (The Lives of Others), the series explores a resistance that is not merely political, but deeply inner and spiritual. A non-conventional narrative of rare intensity that confronts us with a burning question for today: how can we cultivate beauty and hope in a world that seems to have lost all trace of them?
