“The Girl from Oslo” – a holiday giveaway from my Netflix algorithm, undoubtedly motivated by my consuming almost every Israeli series the streamer has to offer – crept into my stream last week and became my latest frenzy. series of 2021.

The ten-part story centers on three young tourists kidnapped while on vacation in Egypt’s Sinai Desert by the Islamic State (formerly ISIS) and the ensuing negotiations between Israel, Norway and the terrorists. I didn’t fancy another story of terror in Israel (because who ever is?), But this Israeli-Norwegian co-production, by Kyrre Holm Johannessen and Ronit Weiss-Berkowitz, seemed different. (This review contains a few spoilers.)

The Norwegian title of the series, “Bortført”, means “the abducted”. In Hebrew, it would have been “Hatufim”, which is already the name of an Israeli series broadcast in English under the title “Prisoners of War”.

Two of the kidnapped teenagers are Israeli siblings; the third is Pia, the “girl” from Oslo who fled to Israel after an argument with her mother. Following his daughter’s trail to Israel, Alex begs his old friend Arik to get involved; they met during the Oslo Accord talks in 1993 and he now holds a high-level government post. When Arik’s efforts fail to deliver the expected results, Alex goes rogue and asks his Palestinian friend Layla, whom she also met during the seemingly insanely social negotiations leading up to the first Oslo accord, to ask for help. to Hamas. But Layla, a doctor who lives in Gaza, works quietly in her own way with Hamas, trying to save her son from extremism.

The women of the cast deliver remarkable performances: Anneke von der Lippe (Alex) as a tortured mother confronted with her past secrets; Andrea Berntzen (Pia) and Shira Yosef (Noa) as terrified and desperate hostages; and Raida Adon (Layla) exuding an exhaustion altered by maternal worries, marital loss and daily life in Gaza.

As Arik, Amos Tamam (from “Judah” and “Srugim”) cradles sculpted hair and a beard that is almost distractingly strung in gray and gives a very internal performance, thanks to careful breathing and a constant frown. forehead (and pretty much every wrinkle on his face). Even when the going gets tough, Arik seems unfazed and maintains a posture of political stability.

The connection to the Oslo conference – in which Palestinian officials met with Israelis for behind-the-scenes peace talks – appears primarily to be a response to an improvisational prompt, “Name a place where people from three nations different might meet. “

While Oslo’s political experiments do not often spring into action, there is an undercurrent of irreconcilable and dissenting approaches and shifting social and geopolitical alliances. Loyalties are flexible, cooperation breaks out, extremism becomes a tactic of choice.

Hostage release plans are sometimes confusing to follow. Prisoners are dragged through deserts and brutalized again and again, ending up in Gaza. (A subplot about terrorists blackmailing Alex’s husband into working to free an imprisoned terrorist seems almost too tangential.)

There are subtle digs into former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and government corruption, echoes of past Israeli efforts to free hostages, and the constant question: how far would each of us go to save someone? ‘one that we like?

After finishing this tense series, I wanted some additional historical context.

I remember Yasser Arafat, Bill Clinton and Yitzhak Rabin on the White House lawn in 1993, and the hesitation of the Arafat-Rabin handshake. But I didn’t really know the story. Fortunately, two films have helped fill the gaps: HBO’s 2021 drama “Oslo” (about the Norwegian husband-and-wife team that brought the two sides together in the early 1990s) and the 2018 documentary “The Oslo Diaries. (With interviews with surviving team members and politicians involved, including Shimon Peres in his last interview before his death in 2016).

After 10 episodes of “The Girl From Oslo” (each about 35 minutes), 118 minutes of “Oslo” and then 97 minutes of “The Oslo Diaries”, I started to think about the English title of the series. They could have called her “The Norwegian Girl” or “The Norwegian Girl”. But Oslo matters, not only as Pia’s place of origin, but because the trio negotiating her release – her mother, Arik and Layla – met as part of the Oslo peace talks. Moreover, Pia is herself a by-product of the Oslo experience, an attempt to bring together opposing forces for the sake of peace. (This could be seen as a spoiler, but it’s the one that becomes obvious early on, before it’s even categorically stated.)

For the visionaries who imagined it, feeling this potential for peace must have been exhilarating. How heartbreaking to watch this opportunity dissolve. How to get out of this place of peace and optimism? Discouraged by the future, or with the belief that if the talks happened once, they can happen again?

While these three Oslo-themed works do not convey optimism about the future of the peace process as long as there remains a conflict of nations, they may indicate that the way forward is through one-on-one dialogue. to person and the recognition of individual humanity.

At the start of a dissenting new year in the Middle East and various other polarized spaces – whether online or on the streets of our cities – this may be the real takeaway: the key , it’s people before politics, personal relationships forged around food and conversation in a room outside the media, to determine commonalities and tradeoffs.