Starring
Lambert Wilson, Michael Lonsdale, Olivier Rabourdin

Eight French Christian monks live in harmony with their Muslim brothers in a monastery perched in the mountains of North Africa in the 1990s. When a crew of foreign workers is massacred by an Islamic fundamentalist group, fear sweeps though the region. The army offers them protection, but the monks refuse. Should they leave? Despite the growing menace in their midst, they slowly realise that they have no choice but to stay, come what may.

This film is loosely based on the life of the Cistercian monks of Tibhirine in Algeria, from 1993 until their kidnapping in 1996.

Background: In 1996 the kidnapping and murder of the seven French monks of Tibhirine was one of the culminating points of the violence and atrocities in Algeria resulting from the confrontation between the government and extremist terrorist groups that wanted to overthrow it.

The disappearance of the monks - caught between both sides - had a great and long-lasting effect on the governments, religious communities and international public opinion. The identity of the murderers and the exact circumstances of the monks' deaths remain a mystery to this day.

The case was taken up by a French court in 2003. Certain documents were recently declassified. In the upcoming months, new revelations may finally bring the truth to light.

Directed by
Xavier Beauvois