The fifth season of the hit Israeli show “Fauda,” about an elite unit of undercover spies, started shooting this week in Israel and it has an exciting new star: Jewish French actress Mélanie Laurent.
Movie lovers should be very familiar with Laurent, who has both Tunisian and Polish Jewish roots on her mother’s side. While her most iconic role may be that of Shosanna Dreyfus in the 2009 WWII film “Inglourious Basterds,” directed by Quentin Tarantino (who isn’t Jewish, but is an abba to Jewish kids — maybe he and Laurent can have a little coffee date in Tel Aviv to catch up!), she’s starred in way too many iconic movies to list.
I personally adored her in the 2010 film “Beginners” opposite Ewan McGregor (also a father of Jewish kids). Laurent is a winner of two César Awards, the biggest honors of French cinema. She won Promising Young Actress for her role in the 2006 film “Don’t Worry, I’m Fine;” she also won another for the 2015 documentary she co-directed, “Tomorrow,” which showcases countries who are doing things in the realm of agriculture, energy, economy, democracy and education that give one hope for the future.
Laurent met “Fauda” star and co-showrunner Lior Raz while shooting the 2019 film “6 Underground,” starring Ryan Reynolds, and she will now be starring opposite his Doron Kabilio in the new season of the hit Israeli spy thriller.
We don’t know much about the new season, but we do know that it will be heavily inspired by October 7, and that the attack on Israel by Hamas had Raz and his co-creator and showrunner Avi Issacharoff scrap whatever it was they had been working on before. The show lost one of its producers, Matan Meir in the Israel-Hamas War, and star Idan Amedi was injured in action and will not return this season.
We also know that the season will be shot in both Israel and France, in the city of Marseille. And we know that it’s shooting for an early 2026 release in Israel and a worldwide Netflix release later that year. We can’t wait to get back to “Fauda,” one of the most successful and widely-beloved Israeli TV shows of all time.
