Charlotte Gainsbourg stars in real-life Jewish espionage thriller
Based on Sarah Helm’s A Life In Secrets, the film explores the real-life story of Vera Atkins, who made it her mission to discover the fate of missing agents between 1941 and 1945.
Francine Wolfisz is the Features Editor for Jewish News.
Charlotte Gainsbourg is set to star as a real-life Jewish espionage agent during the Second World War in new spy thriller, Lives In Secret.
Based on Sarah Helm’s A Life In Secrets, the film explores the real-life story of Vera Atkins, who made it her mission to discover the fate of missing agents she had dispatched to Occupied France between 1941 and 1945.
Born Vera Rosenberg in Galați, Romania, in 1908, to a German-Jewish father and British-Jewish mother, Atkins was educated at the Sorbonne in Paris and a Lausanne finishing school, before emigrating with her mother to Britain in 1937 in response to growing antisemitism.
Recruited to the Special Operations Executive, she was involved in the interrogation of notorious commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau Rudolf Hess, and testified as a prosecution witness in subsequent trials. Awarded the French Légion d’honneur in 1995, she has also been cited as the inspiration behind Miss Moneypenny in Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels.
Gainsbourg, who is the daughter of French-Jewish musician
Serge Gainsbourg, stars along Hugh Bonneville in the thriller, which
is directed by John Hay.
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