Cédric Jimenez chooses a very original way of talking about the attacks of November 13, 2015. In November, discovered out of competition at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, the filmmaker decides to follow the investigators who tracked down the terrorists for five days. If Alice Winocour showed an attack in See Paris againit’s not the director’s choice of North ferry and of The French.
“The idea of adopting the point of view of the investigators was already in the scenario entrusted to me by Olivier Demangel, explains Cédric Jimenez to 20 minutes. It interested me because it made it possible to tell a story in which the public knows the outcome but not the course. It is a breathless race against the clock that the investigators embodied by Sandrine Kiberlain, Anaïs Demoustier, Lyna Khoudry, Jean Dujardin and Jérémie Renier engage in.
Between reality and fiction
” November is an choral film where no one sought to have the star, insists Cédric Jimenez. Like me, actresses and actors felt their potential egos were overwhelmed by the subject. The director took care to organize a “mixed” shoot (with day and night scenes) to try to reproduce as much as possible the conditions of fatigue in which the police found themselves. “Obviously, I am aware that what they experienced was out of proportion to what we could experience, but this working method united the group”, he insists.
The real investigators participated in the development of the scenario and recognized themselves in the unfolding of the facts. “The functions they perform are accurate but their personalities are changed to ensure their anonymity. Having experienced the facts, they understood the changes we had to make in the service of fiction,” insists Cédric Jimenez.
Between action and humanity
We step straight into a section of the lives of men and women swallowed up by their research. We only see the victims during a hospital scene that grips the viewer’s heart. “I hesitated for a long time on how to film it because I wanted it to be modest, admits Cédric Jimenez. However, it was essential to show the victims in order for the public to really feel who the police are fighting for. » November succeeds in being an action film that lets human beings incarnate in the middle of a terrible drama. That’s what makes it strong.