‘Fauda’ star announces season 5 release date on Netflix

In mid-June, “Fauda” producers released a warning for viewers that episodes 7 and 8 in season five “may be difficult to watch” since they take place on Oct. 7, 2023.

By Shiryn Ghermezian, The Algemeiner

“Fauda” co-creator and lead actor Lior Raz announced when season five of the hit Israeli television show will be released around the world on Netflix.

The fifth season of the award-winning action series premiered on May 18 in Israel on Yes TV and will be available for streaming globally on Netflix on Sept. 8, Raz shared in a video posted on social media.

“Fauda,” which means chaos in Arabic, is about a team of Israeli covert operatives and was created and executive produced by Avi Issacharoff and Raz, who plays the show’s lead character, Doron Kabilio.

The cast for season five includes French actress Mélanie Laurent, as well as Hakim Djaziri, Yaakov Zada Daniel, and Doron Ben-David.

The 11-episode season was completely rewritten after the deadly Hamas-led terrorist attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and shows the operatives hunting down enemies in Marseilles, France, while dealing with their own trauma from the massacre, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

It takes place two years after the Oct. 7 attack and shows the Israeli fighters embarking “on a deadly race to stop a catastrophic attack on Israel, forcing them to confront the true cost of fighting the war after the war,” according to a synopsis provided by Netflix.

Raz said season five “begins with revenge, [but] it ends with totally something else.”

He hopes viewers “will understand how peace is important and how we need to think differently and how war is ruining the universe. It’s ruining our region; it’s ruining our country and their countries, for sure. We know that people see this show all over the world—in the Arab world, in Israel—[and they’ll see] that the price of the war is hard, and we need to have hope to solve this situation.”

“We wanted to ask very tough questions to people all over the world, not only in Israel. ‘Is the revenge worth it? Is continuing this very endless cycle of bloodshed [worth it]?” Issacharoff added.

“Where is it taking you?’ I think that at the heart of this season, these are the tough questions that are there.”

“At the end, I felt that this was the most important thing that I’ve done in my career, ever,” Issacharoff shared.

“In the last 26 years that I’ve been a journalist and an analyst, this is the most sacred mission that I’ve had, the most important thing.”

In mid-June, “Fauda” producers released a warning for viewers that episodes 7 and 8 in season five “may be difficult to watch” since they take place on Oct. 7, 2023, and show what the characters experienced that day.

“These episodes return to that terrible day and stand on their own,” Yes TV said at the time, before adding that if watching the two episodes is “too difficult, it is also okay to skip them and reconnect with the season’s plot” in the following episodes.

“Fauda” crew member Matan Meir was killed in November 2023 while fighting in the Gaza Strip as a reservist in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

The partner of Issacharoff’s stepdaughter was also killed during the Israel-Hamas war, and “Fauda” cast member, singer, and actor Idan Amedi was injured in January 2024 while fighting as an IDF reservist in Gaza.

The first four seasons of “Fauda” are available for viewing on Netflix.