Sarah's Key
| Sarah's Key | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Gilles Paquet-Brenner |
| Produced by | Stéphane Marsil |
| Written by | Serge Joncour Gilles Paquet-Brenner |
| Starring |
Kristin Scott Thomas Mélusine Mayance Niels Arestrup Frédéric Pierrot |
| Music by | Max Richter |
| Cinematography | Pascal Ridao |
| Edited by | Hervé Schneid |
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Production
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| Distributed by |
Anchor Bay Entertainment The Weinstein Company UGC Madman Entertainment StudioCanal UK |
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Release date
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Running time
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111 minutes |
| Country | France |
| Language | French English |
| Budget | $7,9 million |
| Box office | $21,1 million |
Sarah's Key (French: Elle s'appelait Sarah) is a 2010 French drama directed and co-written by Gilles Paquet-Brenner and an adaptation of the novel with the same title by Tatiana de Rosnay.
Sarah's Key follows a journalist's present-day investigation into the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup of Jews in German-occupied Paris in 1942. It tells the story of a young girl's experiences during and after these events, illustrating the participation of the French bureaucracy as well as French citizens hiding and protecting Sarah from the French authorities.
The film alternates between Sarah's life in 1942 and the journalist researching the story in 2009.
In 1942, 10-year-old Sarah Starzynski (Mélusine Mayance) hides her younger brother from French police by locking him in a secret closet and telling him to stay there until she returns. She takes the key with her when she and her parents are transported to the Vélodrome d'Hiver, where they are held in inhuman conditions by the Paris Police and French Secret Service.
The deportees are transferred to the French-run Beaune-la-Rolande internment camp. The adults are deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, leaving the children in the camp. When Sarah tries to escape with a friend, Rachel, a sympathetic Paris police guard spots them. When Sarah begs him to let them go so she can save her brother, he hesitates then lifts the barbed wire to let them out.
Sarah and Rachel fall asleep in a dog house at a farm where they are discovered by the farmers, Jules and Genevieve Dufaure. Despite knowing what they are and the associated danger, the Dufaures decide to help the girls. Rachel is dying, and when they call attention to themselves by calling in a doctor, a skeptical German officer asks them if they know anything about a second Jewish child. The officer begins a search for the second child, only to be interrupted when the French physician carries out the dead body of Rachel. Days later, the Dufaures take Sarah back to her family's apartment building in Paris. Sarah runs up to her apartment, knocking on the door furiously. A boy, 12 years old, answers. She rushes in to her old room and unlocks the cupboard. Horrified by what she finds, she starts screaming hysterically.
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