Sarah's Key

A moving story spanning two time periods: Paris, 1942: During the infamous raid on the Vélodrome d'Hiver, thousands of Jewish families are arrested by the French police. Among them is ten-year-old Sarah Starzynski (Mélusine Mayance). In a desperate attempt to save her brother from deportation, she locks the little boy in a closet and keeps the key with her. The girl hopes to return soon. But the family's deportation to Auschwitz seems to dash her hopes... Paris, 2009: American journalist Julia Jarmond (Kristen Scott-Thomas) is researching an article about the raid and comes across Sarah's story. Her investigations lead her to a shocking secret: the apartment she wants to move into with her husband once belonged to Sarah's family. Julia delves deeper and deeper into the past and discovers connections that also affect her own family. Based on the novel of the same name by Tatiana de Rosnay, Gilles Paquet-Brenner's film adaptation proves to be an intense and very personal drama. It is about memory, guilt and coming to terms with it – and about the responsibility of bringing historical truth to light. In an intimate way, without sentimentality, he shows how the shadows of the past reach into the present and have a lasting influence on people's lives. "Gradually, a repressed ‘legacy’ of complicity under the banner of profit is revealed, one that Bertrand's long-established family may share with many in Europe. What emerges is a deeply ingrained black mark on the history of a family and a nation. [...] The film takes a nuanced look at the theme of guilt that stands in the way of personal happiness, which seems bearable only in silence and yet is relentlessly dragged to the surface. This is the film's touching main message: not knowing anything can seem like a blessing. But if you don't tell a person's story, both the story and the person will all too soon become one and the same: forgotten. That would be worse than any pain." (Kathrin Häger, on: filmdienst.de)