Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.

Anne Fontaine’s powerful and compelling French-Polish drama “The Innocents” is based on the little-known true story of the French Red Cross doctor Madeleine Pauliac, played by Lou de Laâge. Set in the bleak, snow-covered landscape of postwar Poland in 1945, it’s a striking film with an almost painterly quality to it as it ponders the fragility of faith and complex moral choices. When a nun pleads for her help, Madeleine (de Laâge) is taken to a convent where she discovers several pregnant nuns, victims of sexual assault by Russian soldiers. Despite their outward, identical black-and-white habits, the nuns’ individual characters and responses to the horror of their situation vary; their cloistered, melodic, religious rituals contrast with the pain of pregnancy and birth. Aside from a sentimental, too-tidy ending, this is a harrowing film that I found difficult to let go.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.