Dir/scr: Katharina Otto-Bernstein. 2025. Germany/US. 107mins
Anyone fascinated by espionage will enjoy this new documentary about the life of CIA spymaster Peter Sichel (1922-2025) who died, aged 102, after an eventful life where he became known as the ‘Jewish James Bond’.
Packed full of information, interviews and revealing archive footage it culminates with a riveting reflection by the man himself on his struggle against Nazism and his time during the Cold War. Divided into chapters The Last Spy, directed by Katharina Otto-Bernstein, serves as a chronicle of Second World wartime history also highlighting the formation of the CIA.
Peter Sichel was born in Mainz, Germany in 1922, to a well-to-do family of wine merchants. By the early 1930s his mother began to realise their Jewish family was in considerable threat in Nazi Germany, so they fled to Bordeaux and were detained as enemy aliens. Eventually, the family made it to New York where they again encountered the evil rise of Nazism and Charles Lindbergh’s involvement with the America First Committee.
The Last SPY sees Sichel constantly buffeted by turbulent world events but always swimming to the surface largely due to his easy charm, piercing intellect and a certain low cunning that possibly helped him avoid the concentration camps (he calls them ‘the labour camps’). Sichel also demonstrates an ability to drill down into the truth of a situation and is not afraid of admitting it: at one point he calls General Patton “a very stupid man”.
After volunteering for the US Army after Pearl Harbour he worked his way up to join the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which would later become the CIA in 1947. He would stay there until 1960 as the first CIA Station Chief in post-war Berlin becoming known as “the Wunderkind”. While posing as a consensual employee he is certainly outright in his opinions. In their international activities he considers the US to maintain a policy of getting rid of democratically-elected governments in order to pursue their own interests. Nowadays the world has come to realise the folly of so-called ‘democracy’ with a hollow laugh.
The CIA later refused to endorse the excerpts of his autobiography that mention his time there. This film allows him to expound liberally in his own words. Later in life Sichel returned to the family business, which is still thriving today and is arguably best known for its brand “Blue Nun”which seems to have endured almost as well as Sichel himself.
IN SELEDT CINEMAS AND ON DIGITAL 24 APRIL 2026