Iosi, the redeemed spy

A young federal police officer infiltrated the local Jewish community in 1985, when Argentina had not yet had two years of democracy.

His mission was to gather information about the Andinia Plan, a classic myth of Argentine anti-Semitism according to which international Zionism intended to annex Patagonia to Israel.

Iosi, that was the name of the infiltrated spy, abandoned the operation almost 20 years later and asked to be a protected witness.

In 2015, journalists Miriam Lewin and Horacio Lutzky turned Iosi's confessions into a long non-fiction story about the largest "criminal conspiracy in Argentine history", crossed by the terrorist attacks against the Israeli embassy in 1992 and the Jewish mutual society AMIA , in 1994. Director Daniel Burman (Buenos Aires, 1983) came across the story in a bookstore in the Argentine capital almost by chance.

He had not finished the book, which shares a title with the series, when he decided to buy the rights.

This April 29,

premieres worldwide, produced by Oficina Burman (The Mediapro Studio) for Prime Video.

“They call me Iosi.

By Yosef, the Hebrew name of Joseph.

A good part of my days I was Jewish and I participated in political and cultural meetings in community institutions in Argentina.

But it is not my true identity, no: I am an agent of the Intelligence Service of the Federal Police”, begins the story of José Alberto Pérez, alias

, in the book by Lewin and Horacio Lutzky.

In Burman's fiction, Iosi is Gustavo Bassani, a theater actor who makes his debut behind a camera with this project.

The actor Gustavo Bassani is Iosi, in the series 'Iosi, the repentant spy', by Daniel BurmanOficina Burman (The Mediapro Studio)

Bassani's unknown face is perfect so that the viewer can concentrate without the interference of fame on that blond young man who sings, dances, learns Hebrew, falls in love with a Jewish woman and falls in love with the Jews whom he must spy on.

Iosi will climb positions in the community, open doors and learn all the secrets.

Not a trace, of course, of the Andinia Plan, a nonsense that was only in the head of a police force that had just emerged from the military dictatorship (1976-1983) and dragged along all the evils of State terrorism.

“You have to be a Jew in body and soul,” a superior, played by Natalia Oreiro, tells Iosi, the only link between the spy and that world where José Alberto Pérez had once been.

“But it's not a story about the Jewish community;

It is not a series about the attacks”, Daniel Burman hastens to clarify in an interview held in Buenos Aires by videoconference.

“The attacks go through history, but we did not want to elucidate or generate a truth or a justice that does not exist.

The series is the untold story of a redemption, that of a man who has a mission that is to find his identity.

When he finds a family, he finds something like his identity;

that is the path of Iosi”, he clarifies.

Mercedes Morán, Alejandro Awada, Carla Quevedo and Minerva Casero complete the cast of this

based on real events, with a script by Sebastián Borenztein.

The director of the orchestra, Burman, is a figure identified with the renewal of Argentine cinema.

He consecrated himself with

(2004), a story of father and son set in the neighborhood of Once, the one from his childhood, the same one where the Jewish community of Buenos Aires forged his Buenos Aires identity.

With

, Burman returns to that place, represented this time “as a period atmosphere, a climate, the one we long for from those times,” he says.

Iosi looks for a destiny in those old slide streets, abandons the spy and finds the man.

Iosi's mask falls off after the terrorist attacks of 1992 and 1994. The spy suspects that the information he has passed to the police served to organize the car bomb attacks that destroyed the Israeli embassy and the AMIA, with a combined balance of 107 dead.

Because the series is also the story of a fledgling democracy, which must grow with the demons still locked in the basement.

The actors Natalia Oreiro and Matías Bassani in a scene from 'Iosi, the repentant spy' Burman Office (The Mediapro Studio)

"The post-dictatorship period fascinates me and we must revalue it," says Burman.

“You have to manage what just five minutes ago was managed by dictators.

Recently we were in Pesach [the Jewish Passover], where there is talk of a people that comes out of slavery and has to wander for 40 years in the desert.

Those people couldn't build a free nation with that head, so they must first wander into nothingness.

Soon, we Argentines will celebrate 40 years of democracy, and perhaps it is the time we were wandering in the desert.

The series somehow talks about that period and the incipient democracy, and shows that we lived in danger”, he explains.

The real Yosi, redeemed, is now somewhere unknown, hidden behind a false name.

The director did not try to contact him, nor will he try.

“I'm taking part of his life for the life of a character, so I keep it encapsulated.

It's a matter of respect and distance,” he says.

The real story, however, is there, in the folds of Burman's fiction.

And he gives goosebumps.

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