Published: 6 May 2022
Last updated: 4 March 2024
Daniel Burman’s ‘Yosi, the Regretful Spy’ is the true story of a cop who went undercover as a Jew for decades, and how he may have inadvertently aided the attacks
JEWISH-ARGENTINIAN DIRECTOR Daniel Burman’s new Amazon Prime Video series Yosi, the Regretful Spy begins with a huge pile of debris, policemen carrying bodies and bleeding survivors crying for help. They are images that Burman remembers well from the terrorist attack on the 1992 Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires.
“I knew people who were working there. Luckily, they survived,” Burman tells The Times of Israel in an interview in Berlin, where the first three episodes of his eight-part series recently screened in their world premiere at the Berlinale. The Spanish-language series was released worldwide with English subtitles on April 29.
On March 17, 1992, Burman was walking towards his parents’ house in the Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Once, the city’s Jewish quarter.
“Suddenly I heard the howling of sirens. My parents were traveling, so their apartment was empty. When I arrived there, I turned on the TV and was totally shocked by what I saw,” he says.
On that afternoon, a pickup truck loaded with explosives drove into the Israeli Embassy and detonated. Twenty-nine people were killed in the suicide attack and the embassy building was destroyed.
Less than two years later, on July 18, 1994, a car exploded in front of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) Jewish center in Buenos Aires, killing 85. It remains Argentina’s deadliest terrorist attack to date. That time Daniel Burman was even closer to the bombing.
FULL STORY Espionage tangos with terror in Amazon series about Argentina’s unresolved bombings (Times of Israel)
Photo: Gustavo Bassani as Yosi in the new Amazon Prime Video series, 'Yosi, the Regretful Spy,' (Courtesy Daniel Burman/ Amazon)
