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Most war films recount history as if women were never involved or their experiences not worth mentioning. That is just one of many reasons why The Innocents (2016) stands out in the war film genre: it is about, for, and made by women. The result is a soulful essay about atrocities committed against a group of nuns during the second world war, portrayed as a complex metaphorical struggle between religious faith, medical science, and evil.

The linear plot line is as austere as the film's narrative. We meet a serene and devout convent of Benedictine nuns in Poland who go about their daily prayer with quiet conviction and meticulous adherence to ritual. The serenity is shattered by the scream of a nun about to give birth. One nun fetches a French Red Cross medical intern Mathilde Beaulieu (Lou de Laáge) who sneaks out of the aid mission to help. She learns that Soviet soldiers had raped the nuns and several births were imminent. Mathilde is a non-believer yet is bewildered by the strength of the nun's faith and compelled to help. The nuns believe they are complicit in sin, and some are unable to even submit to medical examination while others do so with deep shame. The tension between sin and evil erupts when the baby is born and Mother Superior takes it out for fostering but instead leaves it in the forest. With more births coming, a convent full of babies cannot survive under Soviet occupation. It is Mathilde who finds an ingenious solution that ensures their survival.

Within this narrative arc, there are several strands that explore the nature and practice of faith by a group of women with varied backgrounds and different relationships with their god. Throughout the story, the tension between belief and logic creates a haunting presence. Young Mathilde struggles in a vortex of faith, science and evil, and comes to learn that there are no absolutes. The dystopia of war shatters all, yet faith survives in love and devotion to helping others. She grows emotionally with the experience just as the nun's learn tolerance of those who do not share their faith.

While the film has a strong cast of fine performers, it is Lou de Laage who shines brightly in a difficult role. She seamlessly traverses a wide emotional range from inspired awe to resolute determination to help, including restrained romantic explorations with a senior colleague. The portrait-like cinematography conveys the bleak landscape and convent solitude with a sympathetic lens that avoids despair. The film is a tribute not only to the violated nuns but to women of all nationalities mistreated at the hands of military forces. Rape in war continues in modern times, with many nations in denial and others struggling with unresolved shame. This is not an entertaining story, but a dark episode of history on which light has long been needed.

Based on true events that occurred in Poland during post WW2 period, the tale of Sisters, nuns in a convent, where some of them were raped by Soviet soldiers and found themselves pregnant. So, a young French war nurse is called for help, to pull the confinements. You have here an outstanding and poignant story held by powerful performances. I sometimes thought of John Ford's SEVEN WOMEN, another pure female movie, a women's atmosphere where the bunch has to fight against the out world. I will insist on the Mother Superior character whose performance reminds me the Paul Scofield's one, in John Frankenheimer's THE TRAIN, where he was a cold iced, ruthless German officer, so deeply dedicated, at the extreme, to what he truly believed in. This female character here, as the convent directress, is the same kind of character. Terrific.

A powerful film that I highly recommend

According to military historian Antony Beevor, "The subject of the Red Army's mass rapes in Germany and elsewhere has been so repressed in Russia that even today veterans refuse to acknowledge what really happened." A Soviet war correspondent said, "It was an army of rapists," and that Russian soldiers raped every female from eight to eighty. The scale of the rapes that took place is suggested by the fact that about two million women in Europe had illegal abortions every year between 1945 and 1948.

Anne Fontaine's ("Coco Before Chanel"), The Innocents (aka Agnus Dei) tells one personal story of the brutality of the "liberating" Red Army from the point of view of a young French doctor, Mathilde (Lou de Laage, "Breathe") caring for French soldiers at a nearby Red Cross hospital. Based on real events, recounted in notes by Madeleine Pauliac, a Red Cross doctor, Mathilde secretly takes time from her hospital duties to serve as a midwife for nuns at a Benedictine convent in Poland in 1945 that have become pregnant as a result of several visits by Russian soldiers. As the film opens, Mathilde is begged by the novice Teresa (Eliza Rycembel, "Carte Blanche") to come to the convent immediately to deliver the child of Sister Zofia (Anna Próchniak, "Warsaw '44"), who is near death.

At first reluctant, the doctor is moved by the pleas of the novice and quietly goes to the convent where she performs a C-section to remove the breech baby and save Sister Zofia's life. Shortly afterwards, another nun, Sister Anna (Katarzyna Dabrowska, "Król zycia"), collapses and the truth is revealed to her that the nuns were subjected to the assaults by Russian soldiers who came to the convent on three separate occasions resulting in the pregnancy of six nuns and one novice. Giving assistance to the Abbess (Agata Kulesza, "Ida") and her young assistant Maria (Agata Buzek, "Redemption"), the French doctor is sworn to secrecy to prevent the nuns' pregnancy from becoming a blemish on the reputation of the convent.

The ordeal is a test for the nuns' religious faith who must deal with the fear that they will be punished by God for failing to live up to their vow of chastity and Mathilde comes to respect that many of the nuns uphold their beliefs, even though many believe that God has abandoned them. More reflective than others, Polish actress Buzek is remarkable as Maria, a complex nun who admits that being a nun in these circumstances feels like "twenty-four hours of doubt for one minute of hope." When Mathilde has her own close encounter with Russian soldiers who try to rape her at a roadblock, her bond with the nuns rises to a new level of empathy.

Though she was raised by Communist parents and is a non-believer, Mathilde develops a close relationship with the nuns and is moved by their devotional chants and returns to the convent each night to deliver the children of the remaining nuns. The Abbess tells Mathilde that the babies are taken to a sympathetic aunt but a deeper secret is hidden. A semi-love interest develops when Mathilde establishes a friendship with Jewish doctor Samuel (Vincent Macaigne, "Two Friends"), her medical supervisor who joins her at the convent to deliver the remaining babies and their engaging conversations are the film's only light note.

The Innocents is a heartbreaking film that portrays a community that is helpless in the face of brutality and whose resolve is tested to the breaking point when a death occurs in the convent and the question of the disposition of the newborn children takes us to an unexpected dark place. Lou de Laage is outstanding as the sensitive doctor whose compassion for others allows her to thrive in an uncomfortable situation and whose quick thinking saves the nuns from another encounter with the Russians. Her performance succeeds because she is also one of the innocents, those who are willing to give of themselves to others without standing in judgment.

One is reminded of the words of Mother Teresa who said, "If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway." Though it is shot in darker hues and is often bleak, The Innocents is also an uplifting experience.

The Innocents is a French film by director Anne Fontaine inspired by true events. The protagonist is a French Red Cross student doctor, Mathilde Beaulieu (Lou de Laâge) who is summoned to a convent by the beleaguered Sister Maria (Agata Buzek), in Warsaw, Poland, right after the end of War War II. Mathilde is based on a real doctor, Madeleine Pauliac, who headed a hospital in that area.

Mathilde soon learns from the Mother Superior (Agata Kulesza) that the nuns were systematically raped by Soviet troops who are still in the area and threaten to come back and commit more atrocious crimes. In addition, at least seven of the nuns are pregnant and it's the Mother Superior who is bent on preventing the shameful news from getting out-fearing that the stigma will lead to her flock's excommunication.

Mathilde is thus sworn to secrecy and bonds with Sister Maria. Their relationship is one of the strong points of the film, as Mathilde represents science and the outside world and Maria, spirituality. Both learn from one another and in the end, both heroically deliver children of the pregnant nuns.

Much of what happens at the convent is absorbing, especially the way each nun copes with terrible adversity. Not everything that happens has a happy ending (one nun commits suicide by jumping from a high precipice in the convent). There are also two harrowing scenes, including one in which Soviet troops reappear and are craftily rebuffed after Mathilde makes up a phony story about a typhus outbreak in the convent. What's more Mathilde is almost raped by a Soviet soldier after her jeep is stopped at a checkpoint.

The central weakness of the script is the over-the-top portrayal of the Mother Superior, who is bent on protecting the reputation of the order by falsely informing her charges that she's been putting up the newly minted infants for adoption. In truth, she brings the babies to outside the forest, exposing them to the elements, allowing them to die. Did I believe that this is what actually happened in real life? Not for a second but I suppose the scenarists here needed a shocking turn of events to spice up the denouement.

There's also an ineffective subplot involving Mathilde's boss, a young Jewish doctor, who briefly beds her and later joins her at the convent where he assists in another medical emergency. He's only tangentially integrated into the plot and ultimately has little to do but encourage the main character.

The Innocents ends on a very hopeful note when the nuns adopt a bunch of kids who have been staying with the Red Cross, hiding the fact that their own children were born under circumstances that could have led to scandal and dissolution of convent life. Some may find the ending a bit maudlin but it couldn't have hurt the film's chances at the box office.

Despite the melodramatic excess of the antagonist, The Innocents proves to be fairly gripping, with excellent acting performances all around.

To Mrs Anne Fontaine (as finally responsible for what is said in the movie). In the one third of the movie when Mathilde (the beautiful) and French Jewish doctor Samuel played by Vincent Macaigne are in bed.She is asking him about Poles. His answer is: " They got what they deserved with Russians and the Germans"This is disgusting and unacceptable sentence if you care for the facts.I am requesting Mrs Anne Fontaine that this sentence will be taken out of the movie. Thank you Sincerely Jan Walecki I am waiting for prompt answer.Thank you

I attended this as part of the BFI season. Festivals always give films extra love, I've noticed, and this is certainly a worthy story, about the fallout of war, in particular told through the story of the aftermath of mass rapes at a convent in Poland.

That this packs almost no emotional punch is down almost solely to the writing. In this genre, rounded characters who develop and use of moral dilemma are key and both were noticeably absent here. What we are left with is simply a historical reenactment.

Mathilde is the French Red Cross worker who comes to the aid of the nuns to help them give birth to the babies that are the product of the rapes. Her bind is to keep this - and therefore the nature of her aid to the nuns - secret. This is where I feel moral dilemma as a device could have been used more, because her work at the red cross is equally as important and humanitarian and this begins to suffer - but the writing never lets you in on the series of personal revelations Mathilde would have gone through toward the realisation that helping the nuns takes precedence for her. You therefore get no sense of a character arc and this is embodied by the curiously vacant performance of Lou de Lâage. However, its really the script which does not help her.

The nuns themselves are not really characters, but two different sets of qualities. The older ones are stoic and taciturn and the younger ones are justifiably innocent and scared. You never get to understand who they are and there is a strange lack of religious context. There is the questioning of faith and God's will, of course. But the world of the Bible, its characters and lessons are their whole universe. How do they view what happened to them? Through the prism of Mary Magdalene? Through Jesus? Through the Book of Job? Their philophising seems to come from an authorial, rather than a character, voice. For a film which evokes this world much more clearly, I really recommend Doubt.

There is some very sloppy direction. Early on Mathilde is told off during an operation because of a lack of attentiveness. The doctor yanks down his mask to speak to her. How come he can do this? Is the mask not necessary after all? Why wear it in the first place? Failures of detail here really take me out of a scene.

The acting is generally very good and there is some beautiful cinematography. But the writing is lazy and in places so is the direction. For me, this was a missed opportunity to tell a compelling story.

Movies that deal with faith honestly are a rare breed, which makes THE INNOCENTS a special movie indeed. Set in the wake of WWII, it follows a French doctor asked to help deliver the children of several nuns raped by Soviet soldiers. The nuns are afraid of the information getting out, thus destroying their images as Christ's chaste brides and possibly even leading to the dissolution of their order. To make matters worse, several of the women feel having their bodies examined is a breach of chastity and the Mother Superior is more concerned with the convent's image of saintliness rather than getting the nuns medical help or even ensuring that their babies survive.

The movie is about many things-- trauma, tradition versus modernity, forgiveness-- but the themes of faith were most compelling to me. The violence of the war has marked everyone in the story, from the isolated nuns to the Jewish doctor the protagonist works with, and everyone must struggle to try to make sense of what has happened. For the nuns, the mass rape has impacted their view of the goodness of God. Some lose faith, some become outright monstrous. Some cling to their faith out of desperate hope, some come to see faith differently and thus grow stronger in their convictions. The film is neither staunchly pro- or anti-religion, instead examining how these characters deal with their problems in the light of whatever belief system they have adopted.

And I could go on-- the acting is phenomenal and the cinematography perfectly evokes the barren deadness of wintertime-- but all reviews have to end somewhere. This movie is fantastic, very much worth your time.

With seventeen writing and sixteen directing credits on her CV it's fair to say that Anne Fontaine has paid her dues and knows how films are put together; I've seen and enjoyed perhaps a dozen of these but I have no hesitation in saying that The Innocents surpasses anything she has done by a country mile; all I can say is that this is Fontaine's Citizen Kane and in my book that's another way of saying the best there is. It's one of an increasing number of films set in and/or either side of World War Two based on actual incidents, Katyn is another, for example, but it would be wrong to assume that this was sufficient to guarantee success. For that we have to look to the creative term or, to put it another way you can deliver a ton of Carera marble to a sculptor but it's up to the sculptor to fashion it into something outstanding or something mediocre. Fontaine, given her marble and enlisting the aid of three outstanding actresses - Lou de Laage, Agata Buzek and Agata Kulesza - fashioned it into a masterpiece. The plot has been described else where: 1945, Poland. Lou de Laage is working with the French Red Cross. A nun solicits her help, she turns her away. A little later she sees the same nun, on her knees in the snow praying desperately for heavenly intervention. Breaking the rules of her contract she 'borrows' an ambulance and accompanies the nun to the convent where she finds a woman about to give birth. The Abbess, Agata Lulesza, explains that they have taken the girl in out of pity but rejects any help. Another nun, Agata Buzek, speaks French and persuades the Abbess to accept the help of the French doctor. So begins a bonding between the French doctor and the Polish nun. The first revelation is that Russian soldiers visited the convent three times leaving seven nuns pregnant. Later the doctor discovers the Abbess has syphilis. There is, if possible, a final revelation even more horrific than the en masse raping of seven nuns. Shot in colour but muted to resemble black and white, in a bleak Polish winter with virtually no music Fontaine holds the attention effortlessly and has surely coaxed Award winning performances out of the three leads or else there is no justice in the world yet every single performance is A +. The highest praise is not good enough for this film.