Due to the fault of a bus diverted by works, Mia, played by Virginie Efira, passes by the Parisian brasserie where she was injured in a terrorist attack a few months earlier.

Upon entering, she learns of the existence of visits to the place with a support group for survivors.

There she meets Thomas, embodied by a magnetic Benoît Magimel, another survivor of this nightmare night.

Here they are embarked on the steep path of the after.

Mia, who no longer has any images in her head from the attack, relies on Thomas, a broken man who, in the end, rebuilds the others.

"I was in the attack": this formula pronounced in the film by Mia comes up several times.

It is a line of demarcation.

This phrase symbolizes the suffering of those who survived the attacks, the after-effects to overcome, physical or psychological, and the inability to return to the life before.

Alice Winocour's feature film, presented at the Directors' Fortnight, also shows the difficulty of the relatives of the survivors, those who were not there, to re-establish the links of before.

"I would have preferred to be in the attack", will say, disillusioned, the companion of Mia played by Grégoire Colin.

"My brother was at the Bataclan, he survived, I was in touch by SMS part of the night (of the attack)", said Alice Winocour in a brief exchange in front of the public after the screening of her long-applauded film Saturday morning.

"Through my brother, I had access to the world of survivors, I was inspired by all these testimonies trying to be faithful to them," she continues.

"Afterwards, I started going to victim dating forums and what fascinated me was that everyone was looking for each other, people who had just crossed paths that evening or just held hands a moment, forming an extremely close-knit community".

"The challenge is to rebuild yourself, but you can't rebuild yourself on your own", underlines the filmmaker again.

"November" by Cédric Jimenez (director of "Bac Nord"), presented on Sunday evening, is the other film which deals with the attacks in Paris at the Cannes Film Festival, out of competition.

It is a dive into the heart of anti-terrorism in the days following the attacks, with Jean Dujardin.

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© 2022 AFP