Xavier Beauvois’s sublime tale of faith and doubt is based on a real incident from 1996 that still reverberates in France. Eight French Trappist monks settle in an impoverished village in Algeria, offering medical assistance and gaining the locals’ trust by taking part in Muslim traditions. Life, in many ways, is idyllic for the Catholic brothers as they tend to their honeybees and exalt God’s glory; led by the abbot, they are frequently seen chanting and praying. This harmony is disrupted by the arrival of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), fundamentalist terrorists who demand that the monks leave, a request that is soon seconded by the Algerian military. Not wanting to abandon the destitute citizens who’ve come to rely on them, the brothers take a vote, ultimately deciding to stay—a resolution that seems even more perilous after Croatian volunteers are killed by the GIA. As the film leads up to the monks’ inevitable doom, Beauvois considers the intransigence of religious belief: both for his white-robed martyrs and their brutal captors.