Was the series Des Vivants really filmed at the Bataclan?

“We had to go back…” For Première, the series team recounts this very special filming, in the theater where 90 spectators were murdered, on the evening of November 13, 2015.

This is not a series recounting the Bataclan attacks. Des Vivants is interested in the aftermath. To the impossible return to normal life for those who survived the horror.

The magnificent series by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade is broadcast on France 2 from this evening (and already available in full on France.tv). A rare exploration of post-traumatic syndrome, of the difficulty in getting back up when you have gone through such a nightmare. Carried by an amazing cast (Benjamin Lavernhe, Alix Poisson, Antoine Reinartz, Félix Moati, Anne Steffens, Thomas Goldberg and Cédric Eeckhout), it tells the moving true story of the “potages” – these seven ex-Bataclan hostages who became friends after going to see a metal concert…

With an emphasis on psychology, the creator of Sambre films trauma as rarely. A dive into intimate suffering, which the director deciphers for Première:

“It’s not easy to weave the dramaturgy of this kind of fiction… Because there really isn’t any. The real suspense of this series – but it’s perhaps the most beautiful of all suspenses – is: how are they going to get better? How are they going to manage not to completely sink and collapse? How are they going to raise their children after that? These are fairly universal questions, which go beyond the survivors of the Bataclan.”

But at the Bataclan, Des Vivants takes us there anyway. The fiction, written entirely from the testimonies of real survivors, depicts with chilling realism the two and a half hours of captivity of the spectators held in this ordinary corridor, located on the upper floor of the building, just behind the red armchairs on the first balcony. For him, it was necessary to show in order to understand: “It was a question that was also asked at the trial. The victims’ associations asked the president of the court to show images, to play the soundtrack of that evening. So that people would realize. Otherwise, we don’t know. We don’t know the horror suffered. So we too, for these survivors, had to go into this corridor, film the Bataclan, show a little of their ordeal.”

Thanks to the support of the ex-hostages

The team therefore set up their cameras on site. And it wasn’t easy. Matthieu Belghiti, producer, explains that it was important “to give a strong collective dimension to the series. So we went to film on location. But filming at the Bataclan is tricky. Because it is an often busy performance hall. And above all, for them, the memory of the attacks is still very present. Some artists still refuse to perform at the Bataclan today. There are people who have difficulty returning there and we can understand that the owners of the hall have no idea I don’t want it to be associated with this drama again. In addition, there are a lot of requests for filming, for documentaries and others. But Jean-Xavier was keen on it, and I think he was right: we must not make this place a place of life, a place of memory, while respecting what happened there.

The production therefore insisted, and thanks to the ex-hostages, who supported their approach, the audience ended up giving its agreement:

“We had the support of the ‘potages’, who wrote to the Bataclan. That weighed heavily in the balance.”

8,000 letters and a psychological unit

Thus, for a few nights, Des Vivants blocked Boulevard Voltaire, in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, bringing ambulances and police cars to the scene. In order not to cause panic, the production sent “two times eight thousand letters to all the local residents to warn them that there was going to be this filming. We even set up a psychological unit, in case certain residents of the neighborhood needed to come and talk.”

For the casting too, the moment was not trivial. Returning to the scene of the tragedy awakened some painful memories, as Benjamin Lavernhe confided to Première:

“It was disturbing, upsetting even, to be in this concert hall that had become a place of massacre. We weren’t very comfortable with the idea of playing there. Suddenly, there was no more distance, we were no longer protected by the frame of the set. We were seized by fear. It wasn’t the most pleasant moment of the shoot. But we did it in confidence with Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, and especially because the survivors had given their agreement. I experienced this moment as a meditation, a thought for the victims.”

Undeniably, Jean-Xavier de Lestrade was right to insist. The Les Vivants sequences filmed inside the Bataclan are truly astonishing. Without ever falling into morbid sensationalism, they deliver with raw emotion a certain reality of what happened this evening of November 13, 2015.

“We don’t show any bodies, any murders. That was the limit. I think we see a white sheet passing furtively over a body, but that’s the only thing. It wasn’t worth going to show corpses. We sometimes hear terrorist shots, but it was out of the question to show an assassination, the death of one of the Bataclan victims.”

Des Vivants, to be seen on France 2 from Monday November 3, 2025.