World War II · Film · 2010
Sarah's Key
Elle s'appelait Sarah
During the 1942 Paris roundup a ten-year-old girl locks her little brother in a closet to save him and keeps the key; sixty years later a journalist uncovers what happened in her own family's apartment.
Where it happened
Follow the story across 3 places.
Stop 1: Vélodrome d'Hiver, Paris
Key location
Arrested at dawn, Sarah and her parents are crammed into the stadium with thousands of others, the key still in her pocket.
Stop 2: Beaune-la-Rolande camp
Separated from her parents, Sarah finds a way under the wire with a friend, determined to get back to Paris and her brother.
Stop 3: The family apartment, Paris
Helped by a farming couple, Sarah finally returns to her building and runs upstairs to the door she left behind.
What really happened
On 16 and 17 July 1942 French police, acting on German demands, arrested 13,152 foreign and stateless Jews in Paris, including more than 4,000 children. Families with children were packed into the Vélodrome d'Hiver cycling stadium for days with almost no water, food or sanitation, then sent to camps at Drancy, Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande.
Parents were deported first; the children followed weeks later, and almost none survived Auschwitz. France officially acknowledged the state's role only in 1995, in a speech by President Jacques Chirac. The film adapts Tatiana de Rosnay's 2007 novel, and Sarah and her family are fictional.
Where to watch
Checking streaming services…
Full details
- Original title
- Elle s'appelait Sarah
- Directed by
- Gilles Paquet-Brenner
- Countries
- France
- Languages
- French, English
- Released
- 2010
- Period
- –
- Theaters of war
- Western Europe
- Themes
- Holocaust
- Home front
