- Overview
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.
- Release Date
16 September 2010
- DirectingGilles Paquet-Brenner
- Budget
$10,000,000.00
- Revenue
$17,511,906.00
- Stars
Videos
User Reviews
See moreCinemaSerf
13 April 2024
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.
More Like This
Ordinary People
Beth, Calvin, and their son Conrad are living in the aftermath of the death of the other son. Conrad is overcome by grief and misplaced guilt to...
See moreEureka
In rural Japan, the survivors of a tragedy converge and attempt to overcome their damaged selves, all while a serial killer is on the loose.
See moreBlind Turn
Samantha Holt had the perfect life with a handsome fiancée and a future that couldn’t look brighter. But an unexpected turn on a dark lonely road...
See moreWinter Meeting
A repressed poetess and an embittered war hero help each other cope with their problems.
See moreSurrender, Dorothy
When her daughter Sara unexpectedly passes away, Natalie retreats to the summer home where she and Sara used to visit. Time with her best friends...
See moreDire Pines
While grieving the loss of his younger brother, an emotionally broken young man struggles with his guilt and grief as a strange and otherworldly...
See moreTeenage Kicks
Miklós is at the age when everything feels high-stakes. He is coming to terms with his own sexuality, and when his best friend Dan reveals that he...
See moreKyiv melodies
The action of the film takes place in winter Kyiv. After a sleepless night, a young composer goes for a walk through a snowy city in search of...
See moreMetropolis
In a futuristic city sharply divided between the rich and the poor, the son of the city's mastermind meets a prophet who predicts the coming of a...
See moreMy Life Without Me
A fatally ill mother with only two months to live creates a list of things she wants to do before she dies without telling her family of her illness.
See moreJarhead
Jarhead is a film about a US Marine Anthony Swofford’s experience in the Gulf War. After putting up with an arduous boot camp, Swofford and his...
See moreWalk on Water
Eyal, an Israeli Mossad agent, is given the mission to track down and kill the very old Alfred Himmelman, an ex-Nazi officer, who might still be...
See more9 Songs
Matt, a young glaciologist, soars across the vast, silent, icebound immensities of the South Pole as he recalls his love affair with Lisa. They...
See moreApocalypse Now
At the height of the Vietnam war, Captain Benjamin Willard is sent on a dangerous mission that, officially, "does not exist, nor will it ever...
See moreEternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Joel Barish, heartbroken that his girlfriend underwent a procedure to erase him from her memory, decides to do the same. However, as he watches his...
See moreAmores Perros
A fatalistic car crash in Mexico city sets off a chain of events in the lives of three people: a supermodel, a young man wanting to run off with...
See moreA History of Violence
An average family is thrust into the spotlight after the father commits a seemingly self-defense murder at his diner.
See moreTalk to Her
Two men share an odd friendship while they care for two women who are both in deep comas.
See more8 Mile
For Jimmy Smith, Jr., life is a daily fight just to keep hope alive. Feeding his dreams in Detroit's vibrant music scene, Jimmy wages an...
See moreAbsolute Power
A master thief coincidentally is robbing a house where a murder—in which the President of the United States is involved—occurs in front of his eyes...
See more