Light of Elna

South of France, 1942. After three years giving their dignity back to women interned in the refugee camps and saving their babies’ lives, the Elne’s maternity home closure seems imminent. Its director, ELISABETH EIDENBENZ, her colleagues and the group of mothers to whom they have helped will confront the French authorities in order to keep it open.

Summer, 1942. The Nazis have almost taken full control of Europe. As well as the republican refugees arrived in France after the fall of Barcelona in 1936, thousands of other exiles are flooding into the already crowded camps run by the Vichy government. ELISABETH EIDENBENZ, the director of the Elne maternity home, rescues pregnant women from these refugee camps so they can give birth in the right conditions, and afterwards tries to find them a job and a future. She manages to keep the maternity up and running despite the lack of supplies and the problems caused by the Gendarmerie counting on women like VICTORIA, a Catalan exile who has become her most trusted ally. When Elisabeth and Victoria discover that the Vichy government wants to close the maternity, they come up with a plan to gather evidence of the inhumane living conditions suffered by the refugees: they want to blackmail the authorities to keep it open. It is then when they realise the true horrors of Nazism: Hitler’s men have begun to deport Jewish and other “undesirable” people on trains, but nobody knows why or where they are going. After this, Elisabeth will do everything in her hands to protect a Jewish mother and her son living at the maternity, but at the same time, she will discover that Victoria belongs to the resistance and that she’s planning an attack. Elisabeth’s pacifist bel iefs make her give Victor ia an ultimatum: help the victims or make war. Victoria, who believes the only solution to the conflict in Europe is to fight, leaves; the maternity is only a drop of water in the desert. One night, when Elisabeth has almost managed to organise a legal way of leaving the continent for the Jewish mother and her son, the Gestapo breaks into the maternity and takes the mother away. They will soon return for her boy. Powerless, Elisabeth realises she can’t do anything to save him and that maybe Victoria was right. The maternity is not saving lives; it’s only making them last a bit longer. When Elisabeth has decided to abandon her plans to expose the refugee camps’ harsh living conditions in order to help the kid escape, Victoria will come back to convince her that she must keep the maternity open. Yes, it is true that it won’t be able to stop the war, but its task is one of the upmost importance: it’s giving people hope. And there’s no life without hope. It will be Victoria who will pull out from the intended attack to help the child escape, while Elisabeth manages to get the evidence she needs and obtains the permission from Vichy to keep fighting for the refugee mothers and their babies. To keep fighting for hope.