Sarah's Key (French: Elle s'appelait Sarah) is a 2010 French drama starring Kristin Scott-Thomas and an adaptation of the novel with the same title by Tatiana de Rosnay.
Sarah's Key follows an American journalist's present-day investigation into the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup (where French police in German-occupied Paris on 16 and 17 July 1942 rounded up 13,152 predominantly non-French Jewish emigres and refugees and their French-born children and grandchildren, who were then shipped by rail to Auschwitz where they were murdered). It tells the story of a young girl's experiences during these events, vividly illustrating the willing, and even enthusiastic, participation of the French bureaucracy, including the Paris police and French army in aiding and abetting this Nazi persecution and the plundering by the Germans and French of the victims' property. It is also a story of how a farmer and his wife, and by extension a number of French country people, hid and protected Jews from Vichy France authorities, the Germans, and French collaborators, at great risk to their own lives.
The film develops between the years 1942 and 2009, alternating between the past and the present.
In 1942,
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"While researching an article on the Vel’d’Hiv Roundup in 1942 France, Julia, an American journalist stumbles across the story of Sarah, a ten year old Jewish girl who desperately tried to save her younger brother from the police by locking him in a cupboard. Through her research, Julia comes across a trail of secrets that link her to Sarah and change the way she sees the world."
Quoting the program notes from the 2010 TIFF site.