People

yes Studios is thrilled to announce that Nelly Mira Rubin, star of its latest drama series Unsilenced, won the Best Performance Award at last night’s Marseilles Series Stories, a prestigious festival dedicated to TV series based on literary works.

Judged by a panel featuring actor Grégory Montel (Dix Pour Cent, The Fear Index) and screenwriter Thomas Mansuy (Panda, Les Rivières Pourpres), Nelly, who played lead character Oshrat in the six-part series inspired by Odelia Karmon’s best-selling novel "The Confidante", put in a performance that was deemed ‘fantastic’, with the accolade ‘amply deserved’.

Set in the early 2000s, pre #metoo, Unsilenced is a powerful, multi-layered 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.

A recently elected President continually forces himself upon a new member of his team Oshrat – 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.

Unsilenced was a critical and ratings success when it launched on yes TV earlier this year. Alongside Nelly Mira Rubin (Fire Dance), the series also stars Yaakov Zada Daniel (Fauda), Avraham Shalom Levi (Shtisel), Dana Meinrath and Irit Nathan Benedek.

Unsilenced was created by Avraham Shalom Levi, Tamar Marom, Moish Goldberg and Einat Zilber Damari, with Odelia Karmon 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: “Nelly Mira Rubin’s performance as Oshrat is mesmerising and utterly convincing. She is a powerful force on screen, a rising star in Israeli - and international - drama and thoroughly deserving of this prestigious award.”

Nelly Mira Rubin comments: “I am honoured to have received this award and am grateful to Marseilles Series Stories for giving a voice and platform to Israeli culture, arts and TV at this most painful and difficult of times for Israeli society.”