“The Innocents” by Anne Fontaine

A POLISH CONVENT TRAUMATIZED BY WAR CRIMES IN THE LAST DAYS OF WWII

One of the best reviewed films and top box office performing foreign language releases of the year arrives nationwide beginning September 27th

“CRITICS CHOICE! Spellbinding… The Innocents Soars.” – Kenneth Turan, LOS ANGELES TIMES

“Powerful and Moving! Examines every moral crevice of an unthinkable scenario”  -Justin Chang, VARIETY

“Genius. A stunningly beautiful film.”  – Alissa Wilkinson, CHRISTIANITY TODAY

The Innocents is director Anne Fontaine’s haunting and ultimately life affirming post-WWII drama about  a young, forward-thinking French Red Cross doctor who comes to the aid of a group of traumatized young Polish nuns whose lives and faith have been dangerously tested. The Innocents is based on the true story of heroic French doctor and Resistance fighter Madeleine Pauliac.

The second World War is finally over and doctor Mathilde (rising star Lou de Laage) is treating the last of the French survivors of Nazi work camps in Poland. When a panicked Benedictine nun appears at the clinic begging Mathilde to follow her back to the convent, what she finds there is shocking: a holy sister about to give birth and several more in advanced stages of pregnancy. A non-believer, Mathilde enters the sisters’ fiercely private world, dictated by the rituals of their order and the strict Rev. Mother (Agata Kulesza, Ida). Fearing the shame of exposure, the hostility of the occupying Soviet troops and local Polish communists the nuns increasingly turn to Mathilde as they face an unprecedented crisis of faith.

Continue reading Powerful Female Solidarity in Hands of French Director Anne Fontaine →