With millions of viewers worldwide delighting in yet another Israeli hit on Netflix, many are left to wonder if the riveting Israeli-Norwegian thriller The Girl from Oslo is based on a true story.
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Titled Azharat Masa ("Travel advisory") in Hebrew and Bortført ("Abducted") in Norwegian, the 10-part series that currently ranks as the fourth most-watched show on the streaming giant's roster is among Netflix's top-10 most-viewed series in 36 countries, including the United States, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain.
The show was also a success at home and was the second-most-watched series in 2021.
The Girl from Oslo was created by Ronit Weiss-Berkowitz and Kyrre Holm Johannessen, and directed by Uri Barbash and Stain Kristiansen, with Netflix, TV2, and HOT are the co-producers of this series.
The show tells the story of Nadav and Noa Salem, two Israelis, and Pia Bakke, from Norway, who are abducted by the Islamic State.
The complex geopolitical reality presented in the show has left many fans wondering if it was inspired by actual events.
The show's creators have stressed that the plot's specifics are fictional but according to The Cinemaholic website, the core of the story depicting the violent backdrop of the Middle East could be true, as the practice of abducting foreigners for ransom or political gain is wielded by warlords, drug lords, and terrorist groups, and most infamously by the Islamic State.
The question of whether The Girl from Oslo was a dramatization of actual events grew when multiple reviews of the show noted that the story bears strong similarities to the reported 2013 abduction of a Norwegian and an Israeli national by ISIS while they were traveling to Dahab, a small Egyptian town on the southeast coast of the Sinai Peninsula. Both were eventually released by their captures.
Speaking with Israeli daily Calcalist ahead of the show's debut, Weiss-Berkowitz said that writing a series in four languages – English, Hebrew, Norwegian and Arabic – in two countries with conflicting cultures, posed a unique challenge.
She said she and Israeli director Uri Barbash were also often irked by the process of the final editing.
"According to the contract, the final editing was in the hands of the Norwegians, and they reduced all the nuances and layers we built, and cut out a lot of scenes and moves. Suddenly it seemed more energetic and it maintained the suspense, but along the way it also lost some emotional layer."
She said that as a writer fascinated by the relationships between parents and children, "The main story in the series examines how far a man would be willing to go to save a child – his child – who he does not actually know."
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