Halfway through the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, painful memories resurface on the Croisette with the screening of two eventful feature films on the attacks of November 13, 2015 in Paris.
"November", breathless thriller by Cédric Jimenez, retraces the frenetic investigation which made it possible to neutralize in five days Abdelhamid Abaoud, the coordinator of the attacks on the Stade de France, the terraces and the Bataclan, which left 130 dead and 413 injured.
The film "Revoir Paris", by director Alice Winocour, studies the trauma of the victims, through the crossed paths of a gallery of characters who exchange with each other in an attempt to heal and turn the page.
Although very different in substance and form, these stories are two sides of the same coin.
Deep and complementary stories, which brilliantly explore the immediate consequences of the deadliest attacks ever orchestrated on French soil.
In search of the culprits... and the cure
“We crossed in five days an unimaginable storm”.
This sentence, pronounced in front of his teams by Fred, the anti-terrorist commissioner of "November", played by Jean Dujardin, perfectly sums up the plot of the latest film by Cédric Jimenez.
He describes with precision the setting in motion of the police machine and the coordination between the various services, with at the center of the game the anti-terrorist sub-directorate (SDAT), responsible for relentlessly tracking down the perpetrators of the attack.
A breathless race against the clock, served by a nervous montage.
"I wanted the spectator to feel this fatigue too. To experience it with the characters. Hence this ultra-paced side. Like during a boxing match where you are a little on the ropes. The breath becomes short but We have to keep going and not give up."
Faced with the colossal stakes of the investigation, the police officers of "November" give no place to bewilderment.
Quite the opposite of Mia, the character of "Return to Paris", embodied by Virginie Efira, who wanders like a ghost with the feeling of having "become a kind of attraction" for her loved ones.
In the wrong place at the wrong time, the young woman saw her life change in a few seconds in fear, violence and dread.
Traumatized, unable to resume a normal life, she too embarks on an investigation to trace the thread of her nightmarish evening.
She then discovers a new world, that of the survivors who seek each other and come together to ward off fate.
Because for these beings who suddenly feel marginalized, finding the survivors means finding their fellows.
Image from the film "Revoir Paris" presented as part of the Directors' Fortnight at the 75th Cannes Film Festival.
© Directors' Fortnight / Cannes Film Festival
Testify and reunite
Inspired by real events, the scenario of "Revoir Paris" is intimately linked to the personal story of its director.
"My brother was at the Bataclan, he survived, I was in touch with him by text for part of the night", explains Alice Winocour, very moved after the premiere of her film.
“I had access to the world of survivors thanks to my brother and I tried to be as faithful as possible to their testimonies”.
His feature film deciphers the mechanisms of trauma after the attack through a gallery of characters who feel the need to gather and exchange, whether on the site of the attack or through internet groups.
"On the forums, everyone was looking for each other, some had held hands, others just exchanged a look... I discovered an extremely tight-knit community with this idea that you can only rebuild yourself by collective. I found it very moving, this trauma that brings individualism out of the prison. From there came the idea of a choral film mixing paths that would not have crossed otherwise", specifies t -she.
Mia only has snippets of memories and wants to regain her memory to overcome the trauma.
Conversely, Thomas, played by Benoît Magimel, remembers too much, everything, down to the smallest detail.
Both, however, share the same sense of guilt for the less fortunate people who died that night.
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Although this theme is not the heart of its subject, the film "November" also explores the testimonies of survivors and the question of guilt during a poignant sequence shot in hospitals.
Questioned by the investigators, a young woman explains, her voice trembling, that she escaped death twice because the terrorist's weapon did not work.
"I don't know why I'm still alive!" she punctuates in tears.
Another survivor explains, marked for life by the gaze of one of the attackers: "It's as if they weren't looking at anything. All these people they had just killed, it was nothing".
Traumatic memory and the tunnel effect
Some survivors have difficulty remembering the events but retain very precise images in their minds.
Elements that can prove decisive for the police, as Cédric Jimenez's film reminds us.
Because it is the testimony of a victim, describing fluorescent orange sneakers, which made it possible to put the investigators on the trail of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, when they believed him to be dead in Syria.
Mia, the character of "Revoir Paris", also has impressions that haunt her.
A feeling of drops of water on his hand and the image of a tattoo will prove decisive in his personal quest.
"It's a film about memory, it was at the heart of all the decisions, hence the use of many flashbacks. These are not movie flashbacks but a notion of psychology, traumatic memory involuntary", underlines the director, in reference to the memory problems caused, in some people, by an extremely stressful event.
Like Alice Winocour, Cédric Jimenez portrays characters in the throes of severe psychological trials, sometimes on the verge of breaking up.
"I wanted to recreate what the members of the anti-terrorist squad had told me. They talk about the 'tunnel effect', I find the term very telling and I wanted to restore it to the image. they go home and have no intimacy with their family seemed important to me to tell that. Because that's really what they lived 24 hours a day without interruption. They put everything aside, even their feeling".
In addition to addressing the same period, "November" and "Revoir Paris" have the particularity of eclipsing the course of the attacks, which here only constitute a starting point.
If the films of Cédric Jimenez and Alice Winocour dig very distinct angles, both choose to explore the reactions of a society faced with a tragedy of a scale hitherto unimaginable.
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