Educational Media Reviews Online

This hour long documentary by first time filmmaker Maia Wechsler tells the story of four Frenchwomen who joined the French Resistance in 1940. Within two years, they had all been arrested and deported to Ravensbruk, the women’s concentration camp. None of these four women were Jewish or Communist or any of the other categories that the Germans classified as undesirable. They were compelled to join the Resistance by their own sense of patriotism, justice or outrage, and in doing so put their lives at risk.

This film is an exemplary model of what a good documentary should do. It is shot in a very traditional, formulaic way (talking heads interspersed with archival footage and new footage shot at key locations) that forces the viewer to pay attention to the stories being told. The stories that these four elderly, apparently ordinary women tell, sitting around their Parisian apartments, are both moving and deeply terrifying. Their individual stories of reacting to the fall of France and the different incidents that compelled them to join the Resistance eventually come together to tell the story of surviving Ravensbruk and the horror, fear and degradation they endured there. In these circumstances they forged a formidable friendship, a bond that would carry them through the concentration camp and remains strong to this day.

This film does a very good job of taking two familiar narratives, that of the French Resistance, and that of the Holocaust survivor, and not only combining them, but also actually working to shed light on a little considered group of people who participated in both. As women with few rights (as one women noted that at the time they decided to take part in the Resistance, women were not allowed to vote in France) it would seem that they could have easily decided to stay out of the whole war. Their decisions not to do so show not only the strength of their patriotism but their commitment to humanity as a whole. That they should find themselves in a concentration camp as a result of their convictions is a stark reminder of how easily a repressive regime can eliminate its opposition.

Although the film tells its story well, it does not offer a wider view on WW2, or the Nazis, or even the phenomenon of the concentration camps. It assumes that the audience is already familiar with most of these facts, and touches on them only briefly, to provide a context for the women’s individual tales. Unlike most popular portrayals of the French Resistance, these women are not shown as particularly glamorous or seductive, but rather as ordinary every-woman types, who showed great initiative and courage to do what they thought was right. To my knowledge there are very few other documentary films available discussing this particular aspect of WW2 – the women who fought and how they were punished for it.

The film is not particularly stunning in a visual way, although the camera work is professional and competent, and the archival footage is very interesting. The sound and the subtitles (much of the dialogue is in French) are quite good, and the narrative is so compelling that, as already noted, the visuals simply frame the story.

This film would be an appropriate addition to any collection with an emphasis or interest in: WW2, the Holocaust, Women’s Studies, French/European History and Culture.

This film is highly recommended.