# A Small Light (2023)

> Miep Gies risks her life and her marriage to shelter the Frank family in Amsterdam's Secret Annex during World War II.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/119333

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 8
- Episode runtime: 53 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: drama, history, war
- Created by: Joan Rater, Tony Phelan
- Network: National Geographic
- Cast: Bel Powley, Joe Cole, Liev Schreiber, Amira Casar, Billie Boullet, Ashley Brooke, Ian McElhinney, Sally Messham
- TMDB rating: 8.4/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17921714/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: accessible
- Violence: mild
- Tone: somber, tense, humane, restrained, hopeful

## What critics say

Audiences broadly acclaim the miniseries for its humane, intimate portrait of the helpers who sheltered the Frank family during the Nazi occupation.

## Synopsis

A Small Light (2023) is a US prestige historical miniseries created by Joan Rater and Tony Phelan for National Geographic. Bel Powley plays Miep Gies, the office worker at a Amsterdam business who agrees to hide her employer Otto Frank's family from the Nazis, while Joe Cole plays her husband Jan Gies, who shares the risk. Liev Schreiber plays Otto Frank, the father whose family is concealed in the Secret Annex, and Billie Boullet plays Anne Frank, whose diary becomes the lasting record of the ordinary helpers' courage. The engine of the story is quiet, daily logistics: smuggling food, managing ration cards, bluffing visitors, and keeping eight people silent under constant threat of discovery across two years of German occupation. Each episode is built from small domestic tensions and moments of fear rather than battlefield action. Presented as an eight-episode limited series, the show is set in wartime Amsterdam and carries a restrained, sorrowful, deeply humane tone that foregrounds hope and decency amid horror. Fans of The Diary of Anne Frank, Band of Brothers and Chernobyl will find resonance in its grounded historical texture and moral seriousness.

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