Noomi Rapace is set to star in ‘Sylvia’.
The 39-year-old actress will portray Sylvia Rafael, the South African-born agent of Mossad, the national intelligence agency of Israel, in the movie from Vicky Jewson.
The script is being penned by Jewson and Rupert Whitaker – who she worked with on 2019 Netflix thriller ‘Close’ – and is inspired by the 2010 book ‘Sylvia Rafael: The Life and Death of a Mossad Spy’ by Ram Oren and Moti Kfir, a former Mossad agent who trained Rafael.
The tome tells the story of Sylvia through the eyes of the man who trained her and draws on extensive real life research and interviews.
The book explores Rafael’s rise to the higher echelons of Mossad and her intelligence work trying to locate Ali Hassan Salameh, the leader of Palestine’s Black September organisation and the mastermind behind the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Sylvia was part of a group of Mossad agents who mistakenly assassinated Morocco-born waiter Ahmed Bouchiki after wrongly believing he was Salameh.
Her and her team’s mis-identification of their mark would eventually lead to her arrest and imprisonment for murder and espionage in Norway.
Jewson developed the project with WestEnd Films under the company’s female led WeLove banner and the film will see her reunite with Rapace after working together on ‘Close’.
In a statement, Jewson said: "What is so enticing about this project is the opportunity to tell the true story of an extraordinary woman, who sacrificed a huge part of her life for a country that was not originally her own.
"I am keen to explore the unique personality of someone who put their life at risk on a daily basis and lived under a permanent dual identity, searching beyond the often glamorously perceived title of ‘spy’ to the gritty reality of this life and what drove her."
Noomi Rapace to play Mossad agent in Sylvia
