La traque

Directed by Laurent Jaoui

Nazi hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld devoted twelve years of their lives to relentlessly tracking down Klaus Barbie, who had fled to Latin America under a false identity. La Traque looks back at their early exploits in Germany, through to the legal and media battles that led to the major trials in France. How was Klaus Barbie able to reinvent himself so easily and continue to wreak havoc in Bolivia with complete impunity in the 1970s? This is what this fictional account reveals, drawing its originality from the various points of view it adopts: that of the Klarsfelds, who had never before been the heroes of a fictional story, but also that of Klaus Barbie and the Bolivians, the new victims of this "exiled" barbarity. Between historical clarifications and revelations, this story forcefully reminds us that memory is not a given, but something that must be fought hard to achieve.