(Berlin) For the first time, the cinema faces the night of November 13, 2015: One year, one nighta moving portrait of survivors of the Bataclan attack, was presented in competition in Berlin on Monday.
Posted at 12:42 p.m.
More than six years after the attacks in Paris and the Stade de France, which left 130 dead, including 90 at the Bataclan, and hundreds injured, this film is inspired by the testimony of a Spaniard, Ramón Gonzalez, who attended with his companion at the Eagles of Death Metal concert, the night of the attacks, and which was published in Spain.
The film, in the running for the Golden Bear, opens just after the drama: Ramón (Argentinian actor Nahuel Perez Biscayart, revealed as a young HIV-positive activist in 120 beats per minute) and Cécile (Noémie Merlant, Adèle Haenel’s sidekick in Portrait of the girl on fire), wander haggard in the streets of Paris, survival blanket on their shoulders.
Physically, they are unscathed. But traumatized by the scenes they experienced, the first shots of the assailants in the pit of the concert hall, the race among the bodies of victims to find a hiding place, the anguish of waiting, hidden in a room …
“Post-attack” fictions have been shot, including the hit series In therapyand Cédric Jimenez is preparing a film on the hunt for the November 13 terrorists, with Jean Dujardin, for the fall.
But so far, French cinema has been more hesitant than the American industry, for example, to show the scenes of the attack themselves.
The director of the film, the Spaniard Isaki Lacuesta, initially hesitated to shoot them. “At the start, we wondered if it was possible to show nothing of the attack,” he explained to the press in Berlin.
But he would then have had the impression of “betraying” the victims of the attack and of yielding “to a cowardice of auteur cinema”.
To avoid any voyeurism, the film never shows either the assailants or the bullet holes: “the terrorists are in the eyes of the victims, on whom we focused,” he specified.
These scenes are inserted throughout the film, in the form of flashes of memory that come back to the characters, haunted by their memories.
Film the after
Above all, One year, one night focuses much more on the “after”, these hours, these days and these weeks in which the victims are alone with their trauma and their couple put to the test.
“We wanted to tell the part we didn’t see (in the media), what happened the following year, how to live, rebuild your life, not give up rock, love, sex, dancing and collective experiences,” said the film’s producer, Ramón Campos.
Computer engineer and rock fan, Ramón multiplies anxiety attacks and will question all his life choices, while his companion Cécile, an educator specializing in adolescents in difficulty, chooses not to reveal to anyone that she is doing part of the survivors of the attack.
Ramón’s trajectory is “that of someone who is born out of the turmoil, meets himself” after the attack, explained Nahuel Perez Biscayart, 35, who has been nourished by many exchanges with real people. protagonists, present before the film, during the shooting, until its presentation at the Berlinale, just like Noémie Merlant.
Her character “is in denial. She continues to live by helping others. Little by little, it overwhelms her.
The release date of the film in France has not yet been revealed. Is the French public ready to see a fictional film about these events? “It will depend on everyone,” replies Noémie Merlant, 33.
“It’s very important that there are films that exist, that are made. It is a duty of memory. It is important to share, to tell. Then we watch them when we are ready,” she added.