Jean-Xavier de Lestrade said the eight-part documentary is based on the story of a terrorist attack on a theater in Paris.
The film “The Creatures” was released on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the coordinated wave of mass shootings and suicide bombings in the French capital that left 130 dead and more than 490 injured.
The film tells the story of seven men and women who struggle to rebuild their lives after being taken hostage by gunmen at the Bataclan concert hall. The terrorists forced them to watch as they continued to kill, threatening to shoot them if they moved.
On Friday, November 13, 2015, three gunmen claiming to be affiliated with ISIS entered the Bataclan during a concert by the band Eagles of Death Metal. During the attack, they took 11 concert-goer hostages on the first-floor balcony and told them not to move or they would be shot in the head.
The seven former hostages have met at least once a month for the past decade and call themselves “Le Potage,” a combination of the French words “pot” meaning friend and “outage” meaning hostage. “Life” is based on their personal stories, played by actors.
Lestrade, who won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2001 for Murder on Sunday Morning and is an executive producer on the TV series Sin City Law, told the Guardian that he had long considered filming at the Bataclan, but the seven survivors convinced him it was necessary.
“I put myself in the shoes of the victims and wanted to accept the challenge of creating something fictional in this place,” he said. “It wasn’t an easy choice, but we were telling the accurate story of these survivors.”
He said the hostages were among the only survivors who came face to face with the terrorists and had direct contact with them, visually, physically and even verbally. “We are creating stories that are so close to their true narratives,” he said.
