Sarah's Key

"Uncover the mystery."

2010 1h 51m FR

👍

7.3

SOLID

★7.3TMDB · 725

DramaWar

Synopsis

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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.

“Uncover the mystery.”

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Cast

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

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Gilles Paquet-Brenner
Writers: Serge Joncour, Gilles Paquet-Brenner
Languages: Yiddish, German, Italian, French, English
Countries: France

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

ERA

Did you know

Released 16 years ago.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

WORLD

Did you know

Dialogue crosses 5 languages: Yiddish, German, Italian, French, English.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner, shot by Pascal Ridao. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Max Richter. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Hervé Schneid shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

CAST

Did you know

Kristin Scott Thomas and Mélusine Mayance and Niels Arestrup carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

FACT

Did you know

Marketing tagline: "Uncover the mystery.".

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

WILD

Did you know

IMDB entry: tt1668200 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Gilles Paquet-Brenner directs. Pascal Ridao behind the camera. Max Richter scores. Hervé Schneid cuts. Profitable at the box office. Produced in France. Dialogue in Yiddish, German, Italian, French, English.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Released 16 years ago.
2Dialogue crosses 5 languages: Yiddish, German, Italian, French, English.
3Directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner, shot by Pascal Ridao. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
4Original score by Max Richter. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
5Editor Hervé Schneid shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
6Kristin Scott Thomas and Mélusine Mayance and Niels Arestrup carry the top of the cast.
7Marketing tagline: "Uncover the mystery.".
8IMDB entry: tt1668200 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.

The technical file

Cinematography: Pascal Ridao
Original score: Max Richter
Editing: Hervé Schneid
Production design: Françoise Dupertuis
Costume design: Eric Perron
Makeup / hair: Sylvie Duval
Runtime: 111 min · 1h 51m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Budget: $10,000,000
Box office: $17,511,906
Return: 175% of budget
Original language: FR
Certification (US): PG-13
IMDB: Sarah's Key (2010)

Also by

Gilles Paquet-Brenner

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Community reviews

What people are saying

CinemaSerf2024-04-13
★ 7/10
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.

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