JIFF: Die Zweiflers

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https://www.jiff.com.au/films/the-zweiflers-part-1

Date Reviewed: 25/10/2025

Family, faith, and brisket collide in Die Zweiflers, a brilliantly layered German series that serves up dark comedy, moral reckoning, and delicious dysfunction.

Parts The Sopranos, parts Succession, with a dash of Pulp Fiction, set it in a Jewish deli in Germany and you get Die Zweiflers. The Canneseries Best Series winner that proves no one bickers, schemes, or loves quite like a family with unfinished business.

The six-part saga follows the sprawling Zweifler clan between Frankfurt and Berlin. Patriarch Symcha Zweifler (Mike Byrstyn), a world-weary Holocaust survivor turned deli mogul, decides to sell his empire just as his buried past in Frankfurt’s red-light district resurfaces. Unwilling to face the ghosts that haunt his success, his decision to sell the family deli rips open wounds never fully healed, survivor’s guilt, buried secrets, and impossible expectations passed down through generations.

Meanwhile, grandson Samuel (Aaron Altaras) and his British-Caribbean girlfriend Saba (Saffron Coomber) prepare for the birth of their son, with a fierce debate over circumcision. Add in Samuel’s devout sister Dana returning from Israel, his artist brother Leon painting scandalous family portraits, and a business on the brink, and you have a recipe for guilt, laughter, and cultural collision.

It’s funny, painful, and profoundly human, elevated by a powerhouse cast. Mark Ivanir’s tormented Jackie, a psychiatrist spiralling into existential crisis, anchors the series with volatile tenderness. Sunnyi Melles’ glamorous, manipulative Mimi, hiw wife, brings both tragic depth and razor-sharp humour. Together, they’re electrifying — two aging performers at the height of their powers, their chemistry crackling with unspoken history.

Eleanor Reissa’s sharp-tongued Lilka gives the show its emotional core, and Deleila Piasko’s devout Dana adds moral rigidity that fractures the family further. When Dana returns from Israel for her nephew’s circumcision, faith and freedom collide in a climactic sequence of candlelight, flashbacks, and whispered prayers, as grotesque as it is redemptive.

Visually, Die Zweiflers dazzles. Shot in Frankfurt’s Bahnhofsviertel and at Studio Babelsberg, its dream sequences fracture realism like cracks in porcelain — the hiss of boiling cholent blending with forest whispers, memory rippling through light and shadow. The German Television Award-winning cinematography paints each frame with the texture of lived history.

Die Zweiflers isn’t just about one family — it’s about a nation still confronting its reflection. Symcha’s wartime compromises and criminal past raise uneasy questions about moral survival under fascism and the blurred lines between guilt and necessity.

Dana points out that he had to take the law into his own hands. Where could he go when the police were Nazi’s the day before.

“Is there any place on earth that doesn’t hate us?” Symcha asks — a line that pierces through decades of exile, survival, and fear.

Amid the dysfunction, a quieter thread emerges: the coexistence of Jewish survivors and Muslim migrants in postwar Germany. Through Salih (Hussi Kutlucan), Symcha’s loyal Turkish employee, the show reveals the tender, complicated bonds that form across trauma and faith, a subplot that feels especially poignant in today’s fractured world.

Created by David and Sarah Hadda with Juri Sternburg, Die Zweiflers is a revelation, a rare German series exploring the messiness of postwar Jewish life without sanctimony. “The show is about love,” David Hadda said in an interview, “and what happens when there’s too much of it, when it becomes unhealthy.”

In the end, Die Zweiflers leads to a number of haunting questions intertwined: Do we accept the legacies we inherit — or must we break them to truly live?

Highlights

• Winner of the Best Series, Canneseries
  
• Powerhouse cast with standout performances by Mark Ivanir and Sunnyi Melles deliver unforgettable emotional depth as Jackie and the manipulative Mimi.
• Award-winning cinematography and dreamlike sequences filmed in Frankfurt and Berlin.
  
• Covers interesting themes of family legacy, intergenerational trauma, Jewish-Muslim coexistence, and moral survival.
  
• Opens opportunities for contemplation of moral dilemmas.

Who It’s For

• Viewers who love dark, intelligent family dramas like Succession or The Sopranos.
  
• Anyone fascinated by postwar Europe, Jewish identity, and moral ambiguity.
  
• Fans of visually poetic, character-driven storytelling who appreciate humour mixed with heartache.
  

‘Die Zweifflers’ is one of 50 Jewish-themed cinematic works from around the world, screening as part of the Jewish International Film Festival in Australian cinemas nationally from 19th October through to 21st December.

Reviewed by Mary Sinanidis