In the shadow of Nazi-occupied Ukraine, where every glance could mean death, a 13-year-old Jewish girl named Sara Girshovich did the unimaginable: she shed her identity like a second skin, posing as a Ukrainian orphan to survive the Holocaust’s unrelenting horror. This isn’t fiction—it’s the gut-wrenching true story at the heart of My Name Is Sara, a 2022 drama now streaming on Netflix that has quietly become one of the platform’s most haunting hidden gems. Directed by Steven Oritt and based on Sara’s real-life memoir, the film transforms her tale of deception and defiance into a pulse-pounding thriller of survival, where a child’s courage becomes the ultimate act of rebellion against annihilation.
Sara’s odyssey begins in 1942, as German forces sweep through her village, rounding up Jewish families for execution. At just 13, she watches her mother and younger brother gunned down in a ravine, her father vanished into the camps. Alone and terrified, Sara flees into the frozen wilderness, her only weapon a forged Christian identity and a prayer that no one sees through the lie. Adopted by a Ukrainian farming family unaware of her secret, she navigates a minefield of suspicion: reciting Orthodox prayers she memorizes on the fly, crossing herself during raids, and suppressing the Yiddish whispers that could betray her. One wrong word, one hesitant gesture, and the fragile facade crumbles—exposing her to certain death. “I became someone else to stay alive,” Sara later reflected in interviews, her voice steady but eyes distant. The film captures this duality with unflinching intimacy: Zoya Fyodorova’s wide-eyed portrayal of young Sara is a revelation, her every stolen glance a silent scream of isolation.
What elevates My Name Is Sara beyond typical Holocaust dramas is its thriller pulse. Oritt intercuts Sara’s daily deceptions—milking cows at dawn, enduring anti-Semitic slurs at school—with heart-stopping close calls: a neighbor’s prying questions, a German patrol’s unexpected visit, the constant dread of discovery. It’s not just survival; it’s performance under existential threat, where Sara’s “act” blurs into her reality. The Ukrainian family’s unwitting complicity adds layers of moral ambiguity—kindness laced with prejudice, protection shadowed by peril. Fyodorova’s performance, nominated for an Ariel Award, anchors the film’s quiet power: Sara isn’t a saintly victim but a fierce improviser, her resilience forged in the terror of being erased.
Critics and viewers alike hail it as “compelling, gut-punch real” (Variety), a “masterpiece of restrained terror” (The Hollywood Reporter). One Netflix reviewer called it “the kind of story that lingers like a scar—beautiful, brutal, and impossible to forget.” Sara’s real-life survival—immigrating to the U.S. post-war, building a family, and sharing her story in her 2017 book Sara’s Promise—transforms the film into a testament to endurance. “I hid to live,” she said in a 2023 interview. “Now I speak so others remember.” At 96, Sara Girshovich passed in 2024, but her legacy endures in this unflinching portrait.
Netflix’s curation shines here: true stories told with care and heart, proving their power to move and inspire. In an era of glossy biopics, My Name Is Sara strips away the varnish, revealing the raw will to exist. It’s not just historical drama—it’s a mirror to resilience, urging us to honor the erased by remembering their fight. Stream it now; in Sara’s words, “Survival isn’t luck—it’s choice.” Her choice saved her. Yours? Watch, reflect, and carry her spirit forward.
