"The Life Before Me": The True Story of a Jewish Family Hidden in 6 M2 for 765 Days

Living without light. Whispering. Sharing 6 m2 between three. For 765 days. Hiding, never going out, except following a serious injury. "Life Before Me" by Nils Tavernier tells the story of the motionless flight of Rywka, Moshe and their teenage daughter Tauba. On July 15, 1942, this Parisian family originally from Poland managed to hide while the Vel d'Hiv roundup was taking place. A resistance couple, the Dinanceaus, sheltered them in an attic, their maid's room on the top floor.

A crazy story but very difficult to tell cinematographically, since no one moves, no one speaks, in a tiny place, for two years. Nils Tavernier intensifies and gives rhythm to this story with inscriptions on the screen, "180 days", "268 days", "535 days", and some archive images to give a real depth to the sound of the noise of Nazi boots in this closed room.

Guillaume Gallienne and Adeline d'Hermy play the parents, all in discretion, while Violette Guillon embodies the teenager who reveals herself to be the almost supernatural force of life of the family. The young actress gives all her passion to this kid who takes her destiny and even that of her parents in hand, learns to make a bandage, to defy her fears, and even to live by managing to go out to see the light on the roof, after having gone through a basement window.

A few documentary images, at the beginning of the film, show the real Tauba Birembaum, recorded in 1987 when she was 69 years old. And in a final echo, it is her husband, absent from the fiction, the resistance fighter Robert Birenbaum, still alive, who today confides the strength of this love story. They met on the day of the Liberation , at the moment when the film ends. Their son Guy Birenbaum, journalist and writer, who co-wrote the screenplay, simultaneously publishes a story of the same name.

We think we have read it all, seen it all. Crossings from France to the free zone, crazy races, senseless escapes. But this forced immobility, this cohabitation for more than two years, from the Roundup to the Liberation, is beyond imagination. And inspires immense respect for this couple who hid another couple, Jewish, with their daughter, in defiance of all danger. Five anonymous heroes.