On the night of 16 July 1942, ten year old Sarah and her parents are being arrested and transported to the Velodrome d'Hiver in Paris where thousands of other jews are being sent to get deported. Sarah however managed to lock her little brother in a closet just before the police entered their apartment. Sixty years later, Julia Jarmond, an American journalist in Paris, gets the assignment to write an article about this raid, a black page in the history of France. She starts digging archives and through Sarah's file discovers a well kept secret about her own in-laws.
Kristin Scott Thomas
Julia Jarmond
Mélusine Mayance
Sarah Starzynski, child
Niels Arestrup
Jules Dufaure
Frédéric Pierrot
Bertrand Tezac
Michel Duchaussoy
Edouard Tezac
Dominique Frot
Genneviève Dufaure
Natasha Mashkevich
Rywka Starzynski
Gisèle Casadesus
Mamé Tezac
Aidan Quinn
William Rainsferd
Sarah Ber
Rachel
Arben Bajraktaraj
Wladyslaw Starzynski
James Gerard
Mike Bambers
Joseph Rezwin
Joshua
Kate Moran
Alexandra
Paul Mercier
Michel Starzynski
Alexandre Le Provost
Plainclothes policeman
Serpentine Teyssier
Mrs Royer
Simon Eine
Franck Levy
Julie Fournier
Anna
Paige Barr
Ornella Harris
Joanna Merlin
Mrs. Rainsferd
George Birt
Richard Rainsferd
Vinciane Millereau
Nathalie Dufaure
Sylviane Fraval
Colette
Dan Herzberg
Jacques
Nancy Tate
Alice
Frédérick Guillaud
Richard Rainsferd, young
Maurice Lustyk
Man with violin
Charlotte Poutrel
Sarah Starzynski, adult
Maxim Driesen
Edouard Tezac, child
Xavier Beja
André Tezac
Jacqueline Noëlle
Old woman
Jean-Pierre Hutinet
Village doctor
Jonathan Kerr
Camp police officer
Matthias Kress
German officer at farm
Franck Beckmann
German officer in train
Nicolas Seconda
Gendarme Vel d'Hiv
François d'Aubigny
Gendarme Vel d'Hiv
Stéphane Charond
Camp gendarme
José Fumanal
Camp gendarme
Gilles Louzon
Camp gendarme
Pierre Nahori
Policeman in train
Yasmine Ghazarian
Camp woman
Naëva Lissonnet
Little girl in camp
Céline Caussimon
Nurse Vel d'Hiv
Claudine Acs
Hysterical woman Vel d'Hiv
Viktoria Li
Clinical nurse
Loïc Risser
Male nurse
Franck Chilly
Stretcher-bearer
Marco Florio
Italian waiter
Alice St. Clair
Mozart Cafe Waitress
Stéphanie Gesnel
Young woman at the window
Gérard Couchet
Old man at the window
Mark Fairchild
Bob Rainsferd
Melinda Wade
Young blonde American woman
Kiley Liddell
Sarah Starzynski, baby
Brooke Liddell
Sarah Starzynski, baby
Sophie Bacry Picciotto
(voice)
Christian Vurpillot
(voice)
Robert Rotsztein
(voice)
Tatiana De Rosnay
Client in restaurant (uncredited)
Ludovic Louis
Trumpet player (uncredited)
Eric Moreau
Gendarme (uncredited)
Anoushka Rava
Italian woman (uncredited)
Jacques Chirac
Self (archive footage) (uncredited)
Director, Screenplay
Gilles Paquet-Brenner
Novel
Tatiana De Rosnay
Screenplay
Serge Joncour
April 13, 2024
7
Gilles Paquet-Brenner has put together quite an engaging cast to tell this story of a woman with an hitherto unknown family history. "Julia" (Dame Kristen Scott Thomas) is a journalist with a French magazine who is assigned to write a story of the infamous rounding-up and deportation of the Jewish population of Paris in 1942. By chance, she and her husband are looking to move into his father's spacious apartment and she discovers something of it's history. It was rented, once, to the "Strazynski" family who were victims of that heinous event. As "Julia" begins to investigate further, she finds herself immersed in a poignant story of a family who made some fairly horrific sacrifices so that at least one of them could survive the atrocities to come. It was the young sister "Sarah" (Mélusine Mayance) who came up with the idea of hiding her brother "Michel" (Paul Mercier) in a cupboard. Once interred, though, she was terrified that he could be left alone, or found, or worse - so with the help of a sympathetic French guard manages to make her way, with a friend, to the farm of "Jules" (Niels Arsetrup) where he and his wife offer her protection from her persecutors and essentially treat her as their own. "Julia" now focusses on what happened next, discovering things perilously close to home as she goes along. Though Dame Kristen does well enough here, it's really the young Mayance who steals the scenes. Her performance as the young girl determined to rescue her sibling delivers the real thrust of just how indiscriminate the persecution of her people was. Age, sex, infirmity - the Nazis didn't care and that attitude is briefly, but well extolled, by images of folks on trains like cattle in transit. There must be loads of similar stories to be told like this, but this one is imaginatively photographed, thoughtfully paced and well worth a watch.