Irena Sendler: In the Name of Their Mothers

This nonfiction opus - a winner of the Best Documentary Audience Award at the 2002 UK Jewish Film Festival - relays the tale of several Polish women who succeeded at protecting countless individuals from the Nazis during World War II. It began with Irena Sandler, a 29-year-old social worker who saw the torture and death wrought upon the Jewish population of Warsaw, Poland. Undaunted, she banded together with her colleagues and managed to rescue around 2,500 children by falsifying identification papers and hiding them at Catholic orphanages in the Polish countryside. As the film reminds us, this wasn't an easy task; aware of events such as these, the Gestapo routinely scoured the country for children suspected of being Jewish, and quizzed them on Catholic culture and history to try and expose frauds. This film tells the story of the said women, and includes an interview with Sandler filmed in the late 1990s for the sake of this documentary.