Hagai Levi’s ‘Etty’ Premieres at Venice Film Festival: A Holocaust Diary Brought to Life for a New Generation

By: Fern Sidman

The Venice Film Festival, renowned for balancing cinematic artistry with global conscience, became the stage this week for the premiere of ‘Etty’ – a six-part television drama inspired by the diaries of Dutch-Jewish writer Etty Hillesum, who chronicled her spiritual and intellectual journey under Nazi occupation before being murdered in Auschwitz at the age of 29.

Presented out of competition on Sunday at the festival’s 82nd edition, Etty marks the latest creation of Hagai Levi, the Israeli Emmy Award-winning director whose track record includes The Affair, Our Boys, and his acclaimed remake of Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage. As The Algemeiner reported on Tuesday, Levi’s decision to bring Hillesum’s extraordinary yet tragically brief life to screen is both a personal and artistic statement, bridging Holocaust memory with the existential crises of today.

The series, filmed in Dutch and German, dramatizes the life and writings of Hillesum, who began recording her diaries in 1941 while living in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. Refusing to go into hiding despite offers of protection, Hillesum chose instead to document her inner transformation against the backdrop of external catastrophe. Her writings capture both the intimate details of daily life under occupation and the profound spiritual evolution she experienced while working with Julius Spier, a psycho-chirologist who became her mentor and lover.

In the official festival synopsis quoted in The Algemeiner report, ‘Etty’ follows a 27-year-old Hillesum who, at the height of the German occupation, enters therapy: “What starts as personal exploration becomes a spiritual awakening, documented in her diaries … At some point, she knows that even when everything is taken from her — her home, her freedom, even her life — she still has an inner core that can’t be lost.”

After periods in Amsterdam and at the Westerbork transit camp, Hillesum was deported in September 1943 to Auschwitz, where she was murdered two months later. Her diaries and letters, discovered and published posthumously in 1979, have since been translated into 18 languages and become cornerstones of Holocaust literature, often compared to the writings of Anne Frank.

For Levi, ‘Etty’ is more than historical dramatization; it is an intimate engagement with questions of faith, identity, and meaning. In his director’s statement, cited in The Algemeiner report, Levi described discovering Hillesum’s diaries a decade ago. The impact, he recalled, was immediate and enduring.

“After breathless reading, I felt I had found something I could talk about for the rest of my life,” he said. Hillesum’s words, Levi explained, resonated deeply with his own trajectory. Having grown up in a devout Orthodox Jewish household, Levi distanced himself from traditional observance in early adulthood. The break, he acknowledged, was “forceful, violent,” leaving behind a void that he attempted to fill through career achievement. “Mostly in vain,” he admitted.

Hillesum, however, provided a pathway back to a sense of the sacred — not through dogma, but through what Levi termed “a different religiosity, a new sense of faith, beyond institutional religion.”

At the core of Hillesum’s writings, Levi observed, is “a leap: from a neurotic, self-absorbed woman to someone with deep autonomy.” That inner transformation, he emphasized, was sharpened by the existential threat she faced as a Jew under Nazi rule. “Even when everything is taken … she still has an inner core that can’t be lost.”

The timing of Etty’s release is poignant. As The Algemeiner report pointed out, Levi alluded in his comments to “the horrors that shake the world of so many over the past two years,” almost certainly referencing Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist massacre across southern Israel. The atrocities, in which 1,200 people were murdered and over 250 kidnapped into Gaza, have reawakened in Jewish communities worldwide the fragility of security and the persistence of genocidal hatred.

In this context, Hillesum’s rejection of hatred and insistence on inner freedom acquires renewed urgency. As Levi framed it, her message is not only about surviving the Holocaust but about living meaningfully in a world scarred by violence. “Her rejection of hatred, solidarity with the unprivileged, and inner freedom have brought solace and meaning to countless readers over the 44 years since her diaries were published,” he said.

The Algemeiner report highlighted this as one of the series’ most striking dimensions: it links the Holocaust to contemporary Jewish experience, refusing to relegate Hillesum’s story to the past. In dramatizing her resilience, ‘Etty’ asks viewers — Jewish and non-Jewish alike — to confront the moral choices of their own time.

The Venice premiere brought together Levi and the series’ lead actors, Julia Windischbauer and Sebastian Koch. Windischbauer, an Austrian actress known for her commanding stage presence, portrays Hillesum, while Koch, a veteran of films such as The Lives of Others and Bridge of Spies, plays Julius Spier. Their collaboration with Levi marks an intersection of European and Israeli talent, underscoring the international scope of Hillesum’s legacy.

‘Etty’ is a co-production of Dutch and German partners, reflecting the geographic arc of Hillesum’s own life and death, and the postwar responsibility these nations continue to bear in preserving Holocaust memory. As The Algemeiner report observed, Levi’s involvement as an Israeli director brings a unique dimension, grounding the series in the lived realities of a people still confronting existential threats.

The Algemeiner has frequently emphasized the role of cultural productions in sustaining Jewish memory in the face of rising antisemitism. In this sense, ‘Etty’ is not only art but also testimony. At a moment when Holocaust distortion proliferates and antisemitic rhetoric has surged in Europe and the United States, dramatizations like Levi’s series become crucial instruments of resistance.

Etty Hillesum’s refusal to hate her persecutors, even while recognizing the mortal threat they posed, embodies what Levi describes as “a love for life, God, and all humankind.” Such radical love, he insists, can speak across generations, reminding audiences that spiritual dignity is possible even in history’s darkest hours.

The Algemeiner report noted that Hillesum’s writings are often studied alongside Anne Frank’s, though they differ in style and scope. While Frank’s diary captures the perspective of a young girl in hiding, Hillesum’s reflects a mature woman’s philosophical wrestlings with fate, mortality, and transcendence. Bringing this voice to television, Levi ensures that Hillesum’s spiritual courage is not confined to the printed page.

While deeply rooted in Jewish experience, ‘Etty’ also aspires to universal resonance. Hillesum’s journey from self-absorption to spiritual expansiveness mirrors archetypal themes of human growth, while her insistence on freedom of the spirit offers a counterpoint to the despair that violence seeks to impose.

As The Algemeiner report stressed, Levi’s vision makes clear that Hillesum’s story is not only about Jews in the Holocaust but about anyone facing oppression. Her conviction that “even when everything is taken, one can remain free within” echoes in contexts from political imprisonment to modern refugees, lending the series both specificity and universality.

The Venice premiere of Etty reaffirmed Hagai Levi’s reputation as one of Israel’s most daring storytellers, unafraid to grapple with the heaviest of themes through intimate human drama. By dramatizing the life and words of Etty Hillesum, Levi has given contemporary audiences access to a voice that defies despair, transcends time, and insists on the resilience of the human spirit.

As The Algemeiner report observed, the series does more than memorialize a Holocaust victim; it presents Hillesum as a moral exemplar for a world still scarred by hatred. In Levi’s words, Etty is “above all, a love story: the love of a young woman for the man who awakened her soul, and out of that awakening — a love for life, God, and all humankind.”

In an age marked by both resurgent antisemitism and widespread search for meaning, ‘Etty’ reminds us that even when stripped of everything, human beings can hold onto an inner freedom that no oppressor can touch. That is her legacy — and through Levi’s series, it now belongs to us all.