Scripted

At Series Mania, yes Studios, the Israeli producer and distributor best-known for hit drama series such as Fauda, Your Honour and Shtisel, launched its latest high-profile drama, Unsilenced.

Inspired by the novel The Confidante by Odelia Carmon, Unsilenced is a powerful, multi-layered, six-part series about sexual violence, the lengths to which an influential perpetrator, in this case a President - and his allies - will go to silence victims, protect themselves and keep their crimes out of the public eye, and how women bound by experience can come together to seek justice.

The series stars Yaakov Zada Daniel (Fauda), Avraham Shalom Levi (Shtisel), Nelly Mira Rubin (Fire Dance), Dana Meinrath and Irit Nathan Benedek.

Unsilenced is set in the early 2000s, at a time, pre #metoo, when powerful men and the systems and people they installed around themselves could readily mask – and indeed perpetuate - abhorrent behaviours. And it was a time when the women who were brave enough to speak out were rarely believed, considered crazy – and risked losing everything.

A recently elected President continually forces himself upon a new member of his team – a bright and ambitious young woman from a humble background. Desperate to keep her job, she asks the President’s chief of staff for help, but he shows his complicity with the situation by first looking the other way and then, as things escalate, by engineering a brutal campaign to discredit her and keep her quiet. Refusing to be silenced for being a victim, she bravely pursues her claims of abuse, and is eventually joined by other women that the President had attacked as he rose through the political ranks. Her courageous act, facing up to the most powerful man in the country - and by association, the wide-ranging and equally guilty cohort that had continuously closed ranks around him - eventually sees the President convicted and imprisoned.

Each of the first five thought-provoking episodes is told from a different point of view: two from individual victims – the lead protagonist and another, who is her opposite in life - and then one each from the President’s chief of staff, the President’s wife, and the President himself. The final episode brings all their stories together in a potent resolution.

Unsilenced was created by Avraham Shalom Levi, Tamar Marom, Moish Goldberg and Einat Zilber Damari, with Odelia Carmon as co-creator. The series was written by Avraham Shalom Levi and Tamar Marom, directed by Moish Goldberg and produced by Great Productions and yes TV. yes Studios handles worldwide distribution for the completed series and the scripted format.
Sharon Levi, managing director of yes Studios, comments: “Impactful stories like the one so skilfully captured in Unsilenced have driven female empowerment and encouraged women to use their voices against those who exploit positions of power. The lead character, operating in the pre-#metoo era, was a pioneer and while we also hear points of view from several finely drawn and complex characters in this series – including from the President himself - there is, in reality, only one truth.

“We are confident that Unsilenced will be in demand internationally, both as a completed series and a format, and that the main story arc and different perspectives in each episode will provoke discussion amongst audiences everywhere.”

The series was inspired by actual events, however characters and events have been changed for dramatic purposes in some instances. The characters and the events portrayed in the series are not intended to represent any actual person or event and should not be taken as an accurate representation of history.