An American journalist's race to get refugees out of occupied France anchors Transatlantic, a 2023 German drama built on a true wartime story.
What is Transatlantic about?
The series follows an American journalist working in Marseille during 1940 and 1941, a period when the port city became one of the last routes out of Nazi-controlled Europe. Over roughly thirteen months, this journalist assembles a network to arrange safe passage for refugees, ultimately helping more than two thousand people escape before they could be deported or worse. The ensemble includes Gillian Jacobs, Lucas Englander, Cory Michael Smith, Corey Stoll, Ralph Amoussou, Deleila Piasko, Amit Rahav and Grégory Montel, playing the mix of officials, refugees and resistance figures caught in the standoff between bureaucracy and survival. Each episode runs about fifty minutes, giving the writers room to move between the rescue operation's logistics and the personal stakes of the people waiting for exit visas.
About the cast
The cast spans Gillian Jacobs and Lucas Englander in lead roles alongside Cory Michael Smith, Corey Stoll, Ralph Amoussou, Deleila Piasko, Amit Rahav and Grégory Montel, an ensemble large enough to cover the refugees, diplomats and local fixers the story requires.
Context & significance
Transatlantic comes from directors Stéphanie Chuat, Véronique Reymond and Mia Meyer and was produced in Germany, part of a wave of English-language European productions built around World War II rescue stories. Its Historical-Drama pairing sits it alongside other prestige wartime series, using the Marseille setting to dramatize a chapter of the refugee crisis that is less familiar to English-speaking audiences than the more commonly told stories set in Britain or the eastern front. Its focus on the bureaucratic mechanics of rescue work — forged papers, visa quotas, port officials who can be persuaded or bribed — gives it a texture that separates it from more conventional battlefield storytelling, leaning on procedure and negotiation as much as on danger.
Watching Transatlantic on Ktime
Transatlantic streams on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, so Farsi-speaking viewers can follow the ensemble drama in either format. Watching requires a free K-Time account login; the show's page itself is open to read without one. K-Time's Farsi-first interface is built for the Iranian diaspora audience, making a densely plotted wartime drama like this easier to follow start to finish.