General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

November 13: Attack on Paris

November 13: Attack on Paris (French title 13 novembre : Fluctuat Nec Mergitur) is a three-part documentary series directed by Jules and Gédéon Naudet that follows the chronology of the terrorist attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis on November 13, 2015, through the testimonies of survivors, firefighters, police, and French government leaders.¹ Netflix released it worldwide on June 1, 2018.²

Key fact	Detail
Directors	Jules and Gédéon Naudet, the French-born American brothers who made the documentary 9/11 (2002)²
Format	Three parts, nearly three hours total; each episode runs 54 minutes²^•³
Release	Globally available on Netflix from June 1, 2018²
Subject	The November 13, 2015 attacks, which killed 130 people and were the deadliest in France since World War II⁴^•⁵
Title	From the Latin motto on the coat of arms of Paris, meaning "tossed by the waves but does not sink"⁶
Reception	100% Tomatometer from 5 critics and 92% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes⁷

Spoilers

Content and structure

The series follows the chronology of the evening of Friday, November 13, 2015, when a series of shootings struck the Stade de France and then six restaurants and cafés in Paris, culminating in the attack on the Bataclan concert hall.² Testimonies come from the people the tragedy brought together: survivors, the fire department, the police, and members of the French government.¹ Among the stories told are those of concertgoers at the packed Bataclan theater who sought refuge during the attack.⁷

Method of testimony. Each witness was installed alone in a studio that was entirely black, isolated from the rest of the world, and spoke to the camera without seeing the crew, which was hidden behind large black sheets.⁶ About forty witnesses of the Paris and Saint-Denis attacks appeared before the Naudets' camera.⁸ The directors reported that they spent eight months sitting down with hundreds of people, listening to their stories, before selecting those who would appear.⁴

Compared with 9/11, where one brother's voice-over was heard because they were participants filming the firefighters at close range, the brothers intended this account to be more stripped down and factual, giving place above all to the tragic facts of the evening.² Le Monde described the survivors' testimonies as sober, intelligent, and generous, and the film as portraying the "discreet heroism" of the victims.²

Reception and criticism

The series holds a 100% Tomatometer rating from five critics and a 92% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.⁷ It carries a 15 age rating and, unlike some releases of this kind, was not subject to an age restriction or a preventive warning message in France.³^•⁵

Not all French reactions were favorable. The victim association 13Onze15 told RTL that it judged it "still too early" for such a production and saw in it "a form of sensationalism" and "a form of commercial exploitation," pointing to the audience-seeking inherent in the format.⁵ The directors, for their part, said that in the testimonies they collected there was no message of hatred or vengeance, and that they wanted to show that the human being is stronger than terrorism.⁹

The Naudet brothers and later memory projects

Jules and Gédéon Naudet became known for 9/11 (2002), a documentary filmed live during the World Trade Center attack of September 11, 2001, in New York.² Their other work includes In God's Name for CBS, an intimate look at the lives of major world religious leaders, and The Presidents' Gatekeepers for Discovery Channel, an account of five decades of American presidential history through the White House chiefs of staff.¹⁰

The Netflix series is one of several screen works about the attacks. A separate later documentary, 13 Novembre, nos vies en éclats, directed by Valérie Manns and produced by the INA with France Télévisions, drew on the filmed testimonies of the scientific Programme 13-Novembre, in which nearly 1,000 volunteers were interviewed three times (2016, 2018, and 2021) by researchers from the CNRS and Inserm studying how individual and collective memory of the attacks forms and evolves; it won the best documentary prize at the Venice TV Awards 2026.¹¹^•¹² Fiction treatments include Cédric Jimenez's Novembre (2022), which deliberately avoided reconstructing the attack scenes, and Alice Winocour's Paris Memories.¹³^•¹⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Documentary, docudrama, and lifestyle series › True crime and investigative docuseries › Premiered 2006 to 2022

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026