A domestic box office hit in France, Novembre relives the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks that shook Paris on the night of November 13, 2015.

Wisely, perhaps, given their extreme callousness (130 people were killed, 90 in the Bataclan Theatre alone), director Cédric Jiminez doesn’t recreate the attacks themselves. Here, his focus is on the five days during which the perpetrators were on the loose in a traumatised city prior to the police and security services locating their hideout.

The focus is on France’s anti-terrorist cops, the action largely procedural (lots of shouting into phones; lots of maps and photos linked together with red string). There are key figures – the team leader, Fred, is played by Jean Dujardin (star of The Artist) but they remain largely unknown to us as people. We mostly see them at work, reacting to unfolding events and buckling under mounting media and political pressures to nail the terrorists before they slip off-radar.

What human drama there is tends to come from outside the investigating team in the form of a young woman Muslim woman, Samia (Lyna Khoudri) who suspects her flat mate Hasna (Saraj Afcahin) has a...