"AGNUS DEI" RELEASED IN THE US
Niewinne (Agnus Dei/Les innocentes), a film directed by Anne Fontaine and co-financed by the Polish Film Institute, was released theatrically in the United States on July 1, 2016.
Agnus Dei: American Premiere
The film’s title on the US market is The Innocents and the release date has been set for July 1, 2016. Distribution in the United States is handled by Music Box Films. The film has previously screened in the US at the Sundance film festival, which marked its world premiere. Most recently, The Innocents received the audience award at the Colcoa French Film Festival.
Distribution in Several Territories
Anne Fontaine’s latest feature, co-financed by the Polish Film Institute, has been released in Belgium, the Netherlands, and France. The French release alone brought over 720,000 admissions.
On March 11, 2016 the film was released theatrically in Poland. Distribution is handled by Kino Świat.
The film is popular with international distributors; to date, it has sold to Canada, Spain, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Portugal, Greece, Switzerland, Colombia, and the United Kingdom.
Niewinne (Agnus Dei / Les innocentes)
Niewinne (Agnus Dei / Les innocentes) is set in Poland in winter 1945. Mathilde Beaulieu (Lou de Lâage) is a young intern at the French Red Cross, working to find, cure, and repatriate French survivors of Nazi labour camps. One day a Polish nun arrives at the hospital. In broken French, she begs Mathilde to accompany her to the convent.
Cast
Niewinne (Agnus Dei / Les innocentes). Photo by Anna Włoch, Aeroplan Film
The film stars Lou de Lâage (Respire, Jappeloup – nominated for a Cesar award as Most Promising Actress), Vincent Macaigne (Eden) and Polish actresses Agata Kulesza (Ida), Agata Buzek (Rewers/The Reverse) and Joanna Kulig (Sponsoring/Elles, Ida).
International Co-Production Supported by the Polish Film Institute
The film was produced by Eric and Nicolas Altmayer of Mandarin Cinema (Bertrand Bonello’s Saint Laurent) amd by Philippe Carcassonne, and co-produced by Eliza Oczkowska and Klaudia Śmieja of Aeroplan Film (Poland), Mars Films, Canal+ Frane, nc+ Polska, France 2 Cinema and Scope Picture (Belgium), and supported by Film Commission Poland. Lensed by Caroline Champetier, the film was filmed entirely in Poland. Polish artists were also responsible for the film’s visual side, with Joanna Macha as production designer and Katarzyna Lewińska as costume designer. The film was co-financed by the Polish Film Institute.
Reviews
Niewinne (Agnus Dei/Les innocentes) has received acclaim in Polish and international film press.
“Shot in a deliberately drab, muted palette perfectly suited to the convent’s plain-looking environs, Agnus Dei in some way recalls Of Gods and Men (2010), Xavier Beauvois’ magisterial tragedy about Trappist monks coming under siege from Muslim fundamentalists in Algeria,” writes Justin Chang for Variety magazine.
“Fontaine sketches a subtle portrait of the nuns. Some of them are vivacious young women who consider the convent a temporary shelter (Joanna Kulig’s bold performane as Irena). […] In Agnus Dei, what’s at stake is not only the past. It is also a film about the traumatic experiences that poison people with distrust. It’s a film about the dangerous fear of corporeality, rooted much deeper than orthodox Catholic dogmatism. It is also a film about fanaticism. In the world of Agata Kulesza’s complex character of Mother Superior, the solitary struggle between compassion and haughtiness ensues; a struggle between striving for the ‘lesser evil’ and crime,” writes Gazeta Wyborcza’s Paweł T. Felis.
Translated by Karolina Kołtun