Operation Cicero

Serdar Akar's film recounts one of the strangest espionage cases of the Second World War. Elyesa Bazna, played by Erdal Beşikçioğlu, worked as a valet at the British embassy in Ankara and sold secret documents taken from the ambassador's safe to Nazi Germany for money. The Germans gave him the code name Cicero. What makes the case remarkable is how it ended. The material Bazna supplied was entirely genuine, but Berlin largely declined to act on it, and at one point the very quality of the intelligence was treated as grounds for suspicion. Bazna collected his payment and only later discovered the money was counterfeit. He was both spy and mark. The film was shot over roughly eight weeks in Berlin, Hungary, Istanbul and Ankara. Gürkan Tanyaş wrote the screenplay and Burcu Biricik is in the cast. It opened on 18 January 2019. Who it is for: viewers curious about espionage stories drawn from real events and about Turkish period productions. Who it is not for: anyone expecting dense action or suspense, since the film proceeds as a slow character portrait.