Friday Film

The Innocents (2016)

Set in the aftermath of World War II, the quietly powerful drama The Innocents shows women of faith working side by side with nonbelievers to bring light to a dark, horrifying world. Based on the experience of Red Cross doctor Madeleine Pauliac, the movie opens in December 1945, as a Benedictine nun desperately seeks help from a French Red Cross dispensary in Warsaw. A young doctor named Mathilde is soon drawn into a tragic situation at a Polish convent: Months after a brutal sexual assault by Russian soldiers, one of the sisters is about to give birth. Six others are also with child. Yet who are the film’s innocents? Are they the nuns, who have been assaulted, or their infant children? Or are they the viewers who are unaware of this slice of brutal history?