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The Indiana Daily Student

arts

"The Innocents” to screen at IU Fine Arts

"The Innocents

Peter LoPilato, founding director of the Ryder Film Series, had a question.

“How often do you get to see nuns on screen?”

The Ryder Film Series, which shows foreign films not often shown in regular theaters, is giving people an opportunity to do just that.

World War II-era nuns grapple with pregnancy due to rape in the film “The Innocents.” The film will premiere today as part of the Ryder Film Series. In addition to the premiere, there will be screenings on several dates in September.

The film was directed by Anne Fontaine and follows the story of a young Red Cross doctor, Mathilde, who is sent to Poland to help French survivors of World War II. While in Poland, Mathilde is summoned to help a group of pregnant Benedictine nuns who were raped by Soviet soldiers during the war.

LoPilato said he chose to screen the film because he thought it was a very strong piece of work.

He said he usually chooses films for the Ryder Film Series because he is familiar with a director’s work, but in this case, he was familiar with the two lead actresses’ work because he had screened movies they starred in.

“Just the story itself is hard to imagine today in 2016, what their lives would have been like, isolated as they were in 1945,” LoPilato said.

The film stars Lou de Laâge as Breathe and Agata Kulesza as Ida and is based on true events from Madeleine Pauliac’s time in the Red Cross. The film is in French and Polish and will be shown with English subtitles.

In an interview for Music Box Films, director Fontaine said when she learned about the project she was immediately taken with the story.

“Without really understanding why, moreover, I knew that I had a very personal connection with it,” she said. “Motherhood and self-questioning with regard to faith were themes I wanted to explore. I wanted to get as close as possible to what would have been happening within these women, to depict the indescribable. Spirituality had to be at the heart of the film.”

LoPilato said people will respond to the film even if they have no connection with Catholicism or spirituality.

“It’s a very moving story,” LoPilato said. “At the end of the day it is relatively young, single women who are pregnant and don’t know what to do.”

Films in the series are targeted at people who are looking for something more substantive and more off-beat than mainstream content, and every moviegoer will respond differently to the film, LoPilato said.

“That’s the great thing about any movie, really,” he said. “If a couple comes together, I can see them both having very different reactions. I can see them responding more to one character or another, in particular to the older sister who has to make some very difficult and controversial choices.”

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