Her Name was Sarah (Sarah's Key)

I don't know what Tatiana de Rosnay's novel "Sarah's Key" is like, but I found the movie based on it, "Her name was Sarah", outstanding. This 2010 film was directed by  and stars , one of my favourite actresses. Scott Thomas is just perfect as Julia Jarmond, a journalist who is in charge of writing a story about Sarah, a ten year-old girl arrested with her family by the French police in Paris in July 1942, along many other Jewish people. Sarah locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment to make sure he does not get arrested and makes him promise to remain quiet until she comes back for him a few hours later. Unfortunately, she will be made prisoner in a camp outside Paris, waiting to be deported to a concentration camp in Germany or Poland. Jarmond will do everything she can to uncover the truth about what really happened to Sarah and her family, and this will drag her much further than she could ever have imagined when she started writing her article. This is a terrible story, but unfortunately the story of millions of Jews during the second World War. The film touches on the responsibility of the French in the event, it touches on what happened to some of the prisoners, on what happened to their houses, on what happened to their families… It is impossible not to feel for Sarah and her terrible fate – many people in the audience had tears in their eyes – but it is not another holocaust story. It is about Sarah, her life and her death – and what it means to be human. I loved it. Scott Thomas is bilingual, and she was perfect for the role. I'm going to watch it again.