Kristin Scott Thomas is starring new holocaust film Sarah's Key, and has received widespread critical acclaim following the early press screenings. The film is produced by the Weinstein Company, and many critics think that this will be Harvey Weinstein's stab at Oscar glory for this year after a well received private screening earlier this week, which was hosted by Weinstein himself, according to The Huffington Post. Kristin Scott Thomas plays the lead role, and the film is based on the multi-million selling novel by Tatiana De Rosnay, which is about French complicity with the Nazi's during World War II, when 10,000 Parisian Jews were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp in what is known as the Vel' d'Hiv round-up.
De Rosnay told the Wall Street Journal that the movie was the culmination of years of hard work - her novel was rejected 20 times before finding a publisher, and the film struggled to get off the ground until Scott-Thomas accepted the lead role. De Rosnay said: ""I couldn't face another rejection.I wrote a book about the Vel' d'Hiv and nobody's interested." Whether the film is destined for Oscar nominations remains to be seen, but it has certainly impress the critics, with Tim Grierson from Screen International saying: ".director Gilles Paquet-Brenner's adaptation of Tatiana de Rosnay's novel uses the atrocity as a treatise on personal survival and new beginnings that is eloquently delivered by star Kristin Scott Thomas." Sarah's Key is released in the US on 22nd July and comes to the UK on 5th August.