For cinema, the suffering of Poland is inexhaustible. Based on a true story, The Innocents follows the Oscar-winning Ida (2013) in its pained examination of how the country’s tragedy invaded even the most private lives.

In December 1945, Mathilde (Lou de Laâge), a young doctor with the French Red Cross in Poland, is begged to attend a Benedictine convent where one of the novices is about to give birth – she, and six of her sisters, were raped by Red Army marauders in the aftermath of liberation.

Mathilde finds there a community agonised with shame and dread. Some victims are reluctant to be examined, such is their mortification, while the Mother Abbess (Agata Kulesza) objects to the doctor’s coming lest news of the convent’s “indescribable” trauma reaches the outside world. Even Sr Maria (Agata Buzek), who undertook this mission of mercy, cannot comprehend God’s plan behind the atrocity.