November 13: Attack on Paris

I haven't seen anything in a while that would keep me so engaged that I wouldn't look at my phone once. I sat three hours straight without moving, glued to the couch, absolutely shocked and frozen. This docuseries made me feel like I was there at the night of terror in Paris. Seeing the events through the eyes of the survivors was almost unbearably powerful. Very tough documentary but I recommend to watch it. I will probably have to watch it again to process everything fully, but I'm completely speechless. Thank you for making it and letting us see what it was like to be there, because when you read it in the papers it's just another news that you are shocked by but once you turn the pages you kind of forget about it. This documentary will always help me to remember.

Had to stop watching quite a few times to wipe tears from my eyes. The scale of the attack is incredible and much bigger than I knew. What the survivors experienced is unimaginable and we owe it to ourselves to watch this to understand the real impacts of terrorism.

Heartbreaking. Well documented and having not only the testimony of the victims, also of the authorities like humans with feelings and fears. A healthy and truly sad point of view of almost all the victims (only the band didn't give a statement in the documentary)

The events in Paris were just news stories to me, incomprehensible really, as I didn't know the places they happened, and news channels whilst no doubt they would have binged on an event like this, they move on so quickly to the next awful thing that there is no emotional impact and never a sense of the lives ruined and altered permanently.

In this three parter, there was no rushed moving on, and no "cat on a skateboard" at the end, before the weather a la TV news. Instead, there were everyday people who saw things that no one should see, and professionals who dealt with cascading crises such that they could never have expected, all described this terrible night with calm, grace and great humility.

The depth of emotion, the lyrical and insightful ways in which some of the survivors describe their experience really struck me, for example Valerie in Ep3 when she reflects on whether or not she would agree to having the memories removed from her consciousness, if this were possible. She said no, her reasons for saying no demonstrate to me why these people, and Paris operate in a different universe to the mindless killers that tried to take it from them.

I really cannot recommend this 3 part documentary highly enough. The bravery show by the victims and the emergency services is inspiring. The description of mobile phones ringing amongst the fatalities was haunting.

My only very small critique is why there were no photos of the inside of the locations. It would be helpful to know what some of the areas described look like, especially in the Bataclan.