A real-life devil possession in medieval France forms the basis of one of the most visually striking Polish New Wave films, termed by director Jerzy Kawalerowicz as “a protest against all dogmatism.” Drawing from the same notorious event that inspired Aldous Huxley's Devils of Loudon and Ken Russell's notorious The Devils, the film follows a pious young priest sent to an isolated convent where the nuns, and even the Mother Superior, have been supposedly possessed by the devil-and a lascivious devil at that. Famed novelist Tadeusz Konwicki cowrote the script, which has far more on its mind than the later nunsploitation epics it later inspired. “Possession and madness are nothing but revolts of human nature against the conformities we are forced to put up with," Kawalerowicz noted. The film's visuals, a black-and-white high-contrast blend of stark granite interiors and extreme facial close-ups, unfold with the unblinking rigor of Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc, drawing viewers directly into the nightmare before them.