Three months after surviving a terrorist attack in a bistro, Mia is still traumatized and unable to recall the events of that night. In an effort to move forward, she investigates her memories and retraces her steps.

How does someone come to terms with surviving a terrorist attack, knowing that many others around you perished? That is the premise of ‘Paris Memories’, a thoughtful, poignant and emotionally stirring drama about one woman trying to process what happened on a night based on the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks. It is directed by Alice Winocour and is partially based on her brother’s experiences at the Bataclan that evening (although this movie’s attack is in a restaurant, not a concert venue), with Virginie Efira as brilliant as ever in the leading role.

Efira stars as Mia, a journalist and Russian language translator who lives with her doctor partner Vincent (Gregoire Colin) in central Paris. After meeting him for a drink after work one night, she stops off at a bar/restaurant when it starts pouring with rain – a place that will soon become the scene of a terrorist attack. Mia blacked out during the attack and can remember snippets, but she can’t remember as much as she’d like and this sets her off on a mission to establish exactly what happened to her that night – hoping this will help to ease the mental anguish she is constantly dealing with. Meeting fellow survivors introduces her to a range of approaches to deal with what they’ve all gone through, and I felt some of ‘Paris Memories’ finest moments came in the little inserts from survivors (played by actors) telling their stories.

I thought this was a truly excellent piece of work that handles a sensitive subject with subtlety, nuance and grace, letting its powerful moments build slowly and its humanity shine through. It’ll be hard to watch without shedding a tear or few. What shines through most is not a story of city-wide or country-wide trauma (which the 2015 attacks were), but as a story of individual reactions and responses, where every individuals experience and loss is channeled and processed in a different way, and in that ‘Paris Memories’ gets at a powerful point about the nature of trauma. ‘Paris Memories‘ is one of the year’s best films and deserves to find an audience amidst the blockbusters currently filling most of the UK’s cinema screens.

Rating: 5/5

Directed By: Alice Winocour

Starring: Virginie Efira, Benoît Magimel, Grégoire Colin, Maya Sansa, Amadou Mbow, Nastya Golubeva, Anne-Lise Heimburger, Sofia Lesaffre and Clarisse Makundul

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt15329224/