Synopsis
The Nun's Story (1959) is an American drama directed by Fred Zinnemann, available to watch online on iFILM. Audrey Hepburn plays Gabrielle van der Mal, a Belgian doctor's daughter who enters a convent not out of passive devotion but with a specific goal: to reach the Congo as a medical missionary. She becomes Sister Luke. Getting what she wants turns out to be the beginning of the problem.
The convent demands obedience, self-erasure, the surrender of individual judgment. Sister Luke is too skilled, too rational, and too honest with herself to pretend the surrender comes naturally. In the Congo she works alongside Dr. Fortunati — Peter Finch — and what she finds there, professionally and personally, pulls harder against the vows than anything in the cloister had. Then the Second World War reaches Belgium, and the question of how much the world outside should matter becomes impossible to set aside.
Zinnemann's film collected eight Oscar nominations, and Hepburn's performance is the reason it still holds. She plays a woman thinking carefully about something very large. Stream The Nun's Story (1959) online on iFILM.
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