While the ongoing, ever-evolving, and continually tragic conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has been a persistent presence in global news, particularly over the past 18 months, it is surprising how little most people actually know about the history of the conflict. This is partly due to the tendency of news reports to boil everything down to a simple narrative that can be quickly digested in the present tense, but it is also due to how enormously complex and conflicted the history is. This may be one of the reasons why most mainstream filmmakers outside of the Middle East have long shied away from the topic and rarely set their stories against its backdrop.

And that is why Michael Winterbottom’s Shoshana is such a daring film. Of course, there is certain degree of safety in that it takes place in the past, rather than the vexed present, but any film that takes on this subject matter is still inherently at risk of condemnation from all sides (just ask Steven Spielberg, whose 2005 drama Munich about the Israeli response to the kidnapping and murder of their athletes at the 1972 Olympics by Palestinian terrorists managed to upset just about everyone). Winterbottom is no novice when it comes to wading into muddy, contested arenas. Welcome to Sarajevo (1997) was set in the early stages of the Bosnian War; The Road to Guantánamo (2006) mixed drama and documentary to tell the story of three British Muslims held at the notorious U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay; and A Mighty Heart (2007) dramatized the abduction and murder of journalist Daniel Pearl by Muslim terrorists through the experiences of his wife. Winterbottom is, in his own right, quite fearless, and that is to be admired, even if it doesn’t always lead him in the best directions (witness his absurd 2004 drama 9 Songs, which was a lousy excuse to dabble in mixing hard-core sex with art-film pretension).

Shoshana is set in Mandatory Palestine, the geopolitical entity that was cobbled together under British control from 1922 to the creation of Israel in 1948. It tells the true story of the romantic relationship between Shoshana Borochov (Irina Starshenbaum), a Jewish journalist and the daughter of the founder of socialist Zionism, and Thomas Wilkin (Douglas Booth), the British deputy superintendent of Palestinian police. Because the British were viewed as an illegitimate occupying force by both the Jews and Arabs living in Palestine, the idea of a romance between a leftist Jewish writer and a British police officer was inherently scandalous. Their romance is vexed even more by the fact that Shoshana’s brother, Ezra (Ofer Seker), is a militant Zionist with connections to the Jewish underground, and Tom has to work under Geoffrey Morton (Harry Melling), the relentless newly appointed police supervisor who is determined to root out all illicit activity, no matter what the cost and the damage (physical and political). Tom, who has lived in Palestine for years and has an affinity for the people there, is forced to make choices under Morton’s direction that he wouldn’t otherwise, most of which is aimed at destroying the Zionist underground run by the charismatic Avraham Stern (Aury Alby).

It is somewhat ill-fitting that the film is called Shoshana because the title character, although extremely well played by Irina Starshenbaum, is often peripheral to the action. Her relationship with Tom is the center of the narrative, yet it is Tom whose is forced over and over again into compromised situations due to his professional obligations and the pressure exerted on him by Morton, whose beady-eyed matter-of-factness masks a clear attraction to cruelty and violence. The screenplay by Laurence Coriat, Paul Viragh, and Winterbottom covers a great deal of territory with a small number of characters, although the film’s efficiencies come at the cost of a grander vision that might have been better suited to a longer film that could have drawn out some of the political and historical complexities with a finer edge. As is, Shoshana is immensely compelling and engaging, even if its fraught romantic centerpiece plays too close to traditional expectations, right down the frisson eventually caused by Tom having to ask Shoshana the kind of questions that come from a police officer, not a lover.

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