the moving series inspired by the survivors of the Bataclan

“Everything but not that!” director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade instinctively reacted when, in March 2023, producers offered him a series project on the terrorist attack at the Bataclan on November 13, 2015. At the mention of these attacks, like many French people, he saw himself overwhelmed by emotion.

“This story really scared me. Then, I said to myself that it was precisely for this reason that we had to make this series: fiction had to take hold of this story, we had to create a large fresco around it so that everyone manages to overcome their emotional state and so that we can share it again.

For their part, the producers already had a common thread in mind. For more than a year and a half, they had maintained close ties with a group of Bataclan survivors. Taken hostage by two of the three terrorists who burst into the concert hall, eleven people spent 2 hours and 19 minutes in a corridor measuring 1m10 by 6m20, under the barrels of two Kalashnikovs and within range of explosive belts.

A hundred times they had seen themselves dead. However, after the very risky assault on the BRI, they miraculously came out alive. A few days after the events, Stéphane felt the need to find those with whom he had gone through this ordeal. Marie and Arnaud, Sébastien, David, Grégory and Caroline responded to his invitation.

And for years, these seven, who call themselves “potages” (a contraction of friends and hostages), met every week in a Parisian bar, united by an unbreakable bond woven from the threads of this evening so complicated to understand by those close to them, from their discussions, from the constantly retraced chronology of the facts but also by singing, laughter, the love of music…

On the importance of long term

Convinced, Jean-Xavier de Lestrade and his sidekick Antoine Lacomblez met the soups. First in groups, then individually, spending entire days with each person. “We benefited from their need to confide. I have notebooks full of notes. They were inexhaustible,” remembers Antoine Lacomblez.

These “living people have thus provided hundreds of details, often intimate and even sections of discussions, repeated word for word, which give this fiction a very close proximity to reality. Constantly moving from the individual to the group, this creation also tells the story of the strength of the collective, and the way in which it repairs. The actress Alix Poisson, who plays Marie, confided to Le Pèlerin “certain soups told us: I don’t know what would have happened if I had had to go through the aftermath of the attack alone.”

“Eight hours of empathy”

In eight one-hour episodes, through each person’s breakdowns and hopes, we get as close as possible to these survivors. By betting on the long term to retrace these paths of life, “Living people», invites you to a rare experience, which Benjamin Lavernhe, who plays Arnaud, sums up in one formula: “Eight hours of empathy! Listening to the characters and their pain so much is crazy.”

Like the soups in their bar, we draw strength and joy of life from reunions. Particularly in the moments of improvised music and singing at the bar. These joyful moments, filmed at the start of the four months of filming, “set the mark” according to Benjamin Lavernhe. “The day before the first day of filming, Jean-Xavier sent us an email. He reminded us that looks are crucial in these scenes. The way we look at each other, the attention we pay to each other, the delicacy, all that, is the basis of the series.

All underpinned by the respect shown by the actors to the people they had to play and whom they met: “In the theater, we say that we defend a character. I needed to defend Caroline, even if my role was not to repair her,” explained actress Anne Steffens. “Without trying to play to please the soups, we all knew that we should not cheat,” adds Alix Poisson. I didn’t want Marie to be disappointed, or sad, or not understand my game intentions. That pushed me to surpass myself even more. »

The right amount of violence

But this listening is not free from harshness. The violence of the terrorist attacks and the after-effects in each of the soups are not swept away by the scenario. But what to show? And how? A major concern for Jean-Xavier de Lestrade whose attention to human beings in all their complexity no longer needs to be demonstrated, after his series like Sambre, Laetitia or the documentary Suspicions.

Living people starts at 12:30 a.m. at the Bataclan exit. The noises (moans, screams, shots, sirens, etc.) and the flashing lights are of course present to set the plot. But no image is spectacular. One of the trademarks of Lestrade’s work. Also, when the memories come back to Stéphane, Marie, Arnaud, Sébastien, Grégory, Caroline and David, we are not put up against the wall, but accompanied until the moment of entering with them into this little corner of the Bataclan.

“Nothing can better than fiction reflect the journey of these people after their exit from this corridor” already estimated the director in March 2024, during a conference given at the Séries Mania festival, in Lille. And after spending these hours alongside the protagonists, their companions, children, psychologists and BRI stakeholders, we can only validate our intuition. And salute this expert teamwork for the collective memory.