in the secrecy of a convent

Poland, winter 1945. Assigned to a temporary center of the French Red Cross, Mathilde Beaulieu, a young doctor, sees a distraught nun come running. She walked for miles in the snow to reach the small hospital and speak to the overwhelmed nursing staff, including Mathilde, who ended up throwing her out without understanding a word of what she wanted.

A few minutes later, the young volunteer sees through the window full of frost this same nun kneeling, praying in the cold.

Victims condemned to silence

If it does not open Anne Fontaine’s film, this very strong scene sums up its intensity and announces the deep, sometimes disturbing questions that the director tackles without complacency. Agreeing to follow Sister Maria to her convent, where she enters unannounced, Mathilde gradually discovers the horror of a situation that the mother superior wants to keep secret at all costs: almost all the sisters have been raped by Soviet soldiers hunting down the Nazis, seven of them are pregnant.

Inspired by a little-known episode in Polish history – twenty-five nuns were raped by Russian soldiers in 1945 and most of them murdered – Les Innocentes is a stunning film that explores the abyss without renouncing light. By describing the mental journey of the young doctor, an atheist, at the heart of this bruised community, the film questions the mystery of faith. But Anne Fontaine goes further: how do these nuns accept – or not – motherhood?

The rigorous writing of the screenplay responds to the images and lights, which are austere without being too tragic. Warmer tones dominate in the French hospital, against the backdrop of a late-war romance between Mathilde and one of her fellow doctors. In these roles, Lou de Laâge and Vincent Macaigne shine with the finesse of their acting. The Polish actresses Agata Kulesza (mother superior) and Agata Buzek (sister Maria) impose themselves in harsher registers.

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