The Innocents(2016)

Storyline

• Poland, winter of 1945. Mathilde Beaulieu (Lou de Lâage) is a young intern working with a branch of the French Red Cross. They are on a mission to find, treat and repatriate French survivors of the German camps. One day, a Polish nun arrives in the hospital. In very poor French, she begs Mathilde to come to her convent. Mathilde life and beliefs change when she discovers the advanced state of pregnancy that affect several of the Sisters of the convent just outside the hospital where she performs. In the aftermath of WWII, right in the middle of the frozen December of 1945 in Poland, Mathilde Beaulieu is a dedicated and conscientious young French Red Cross doctor who looks after the wounded French soldiers unaware that her life is about to change, when unexpectedly, a desperate nun from the nearby Polish convent urgently pleads for her help. Reluctantly, Mathilde will visit the convent only to discover that when Poland was persecuted by the Germans, the Soviet liberators burst into the convent and indiscriminately ravished the defenceless nuns. Now, as a result, seven nuns in the last stages of their pregnancies are in need of a midwife, a rather unorthodox predicament, since the pregnancies must be kept secret otherwise the nunnery will be shut down and the nuns will be evicted and rejected as objects of shame. With her duty to protect the sinful secret, Mathilde and the kind-hearted Sister Maria must find a way to help the childless Brides of God reconcile faith with the horrible past regardless of their vow of chastity, however, as each day the nuns relive the harsh ordeal, can they find consolation only in praying? — Nick Riganas