Elle s'appelait Sarah

WARNING: This review is hidden because it reveals the content of the film.
Click here to show this review. When a story is told, it is not forgotten. It becomes a part of who we were, and of what we can become. That is the last line spoken by Kristin Scott Thomas in this beautiful drama. On July 16 and 17 of 1942, the biggest roundup of Jewish people in Paris and its suburbs (known as the Vel d’Hiv round-up) was carried out under Pierre Laval’s government. In the course of two days, 12,884 Jews were arrested: 3,031 were adult men. Because they had not developed the reflex of hiding, 9,853 women and children were arrested (of those, I read around 4,000 were children) I had no idea about all this. I didn’t know the French cooperated with the Germans in exterminating Jews so this was a wildly interesting story to me, if only for the historical aspect of it. According to an article in The Economist in 2010," The French have tended to confront their record under Nazi occupation with a mixture of denial, silence and myth. The Second World War was not on the school curriculum until 1962. Textbooks scarcely mentioned the Holocaust. No French leader from de Gaulle to Mitterrand acknowledged the state’s part in deporting Jews to Nazi death camps. It was not until Jacques Chirac became president in 1995 that the French state accepted its official complicity, prompting much soul-searching over collaboration, memory and guilt." The movie’s plot, based on the French novel Elle s’appelait Sarah, by author Tatiana de Rosnay tells the story of an American living in Paris (Scott Thomas) who decides to investigate the Vel D’Hiv roundup and the story of a little girl, Sarah Starzynski, that was taken to the Vélodrome but never found in the records of those sent to death camps. As she delves into the past of that little girl, she discovers that Michel, Sarah’s little brother, was also never sent to Poland and she will connect the dots to link Sarah to her own family. Against all odds, she will embark on a quest, determined to find out what happened to Sarah, and whether she is still alive or not. This is a tough movie to watch, but a very beautiful story about a part of history we can’t forget. Don’t miss it.