4.054 minSeason 1 • Episode 7
LatestPetit plans a desperate rescue operation. Realizing that Marseilles is no longer safe, Mary-Jayne, Albert and Varian all face heart-wrenching decisions.
Two Americans and their allies form a scrappy rescue operation in 1940 Marseilles to help artists, writers and other refugees fleeing Europe during WWII. Transatlantic is a historical drama television miniseries created by Anna Winger and Daniel Hendler, based on the 2019 novel The Flight Portfolio by Julie Orringer. The novel explores the historic Emergency Rescue Committee that operated in Marseilles, Spain, and Portugal in 1940 after the fall of France. The series includes or refers to well-known artists or scholars of the time who were saved by the Committee or interacted with it. The series closed the 2023 Series Mania festival in March, ahead of its Netflix premiere on 7 April 2023.
Production
Marseilles recreated with sun-drenched dread—beautiful and suffocating.
Writing
Makes consular bureaucracy genuinely suspenseful. No small feat.
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Varian Fry's actual list saved over 2,000 people including Hannah Arendt and Max Ernst; he died in obscurity because the US government considered him an embarrassment.
The series deliberately centers queer and Black resistance figures often erased from Holocaust narratives—Paul Kandjo's arc reclaims hidden histories of solidarity.
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