Small Acts Against Impossible Evil

MOVIE REVIEW
The Resistance
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Genre: Drama, History, Narrative Short
Year Released: 2026
Runtime: 14 minutes
Director(s): Natalie Schwan
Writer(s): Natalie Schwan
Cast: Ella-June Henrard, Cielke Bessemans, Felix Meyer, Michel Bauwens
Where to Watch: shown at the 2026 Dances with Films Los Angeles

RAVING REVIEW: Fourteen minutes can vanish quickly, especially when a film is working inside World War II history, resistance networks, family tension, occupied streets, and the moral terror of choosing action over survival. THE RESISTANCE doesn’t have the luxury of a feature-length film, and Natalie Schwan seems aware of that from the beginning. The short moves with the pressure of a story already in motion, dropping viewers into Nazi-occupied Belgium at the moment when one young woman’s distance from horror can no longer hold.

The film follows Eva, played by Ella-June Henrard, whose life fractures after violence forces her to recognize the human cost of denial. Her sister Helene, played by Cielke Bessemans, has already been drawn toward a covert Belgian Resistance group, and Eva’s entry into that world begins with small acts before the danger grows into something more direct. Alongside Pierre and Gérard, the sisters become tied to an operation aimed at a prisoner train bound for Auschwitz, a mission inspired by the real 1943 attack on the Twentieth Convoy from Mechelen.

That historical foundation gives THE RESISTANCE importance, though Schwan avoids treating history as a shortcut to emotion. The film’s impact comes from scale. It’s not trying to stage the entirety of the Holocaust, summarize Belgian wartime resistance, or reduce atrocity into a small moment of inspiration. It narrows the frame to a few people staring at a choice most would like to imagine they’d make, even as they know fear often has a more persuasive language than courage.

Henrard carries Eva’s arc through guarded stillness as much as dialogue. Eva isn’t introduced as a fearless rebel waiting for permission to emerge. She begins closer to the people who survive by not seeing too much, not asking too much, and not letting themselves imagine the destination of what’s happening around them. That makes her turn toward action more interesting than a simple heroic awakening. The performance works best when Eva’s face seems to register the gap between what she used to believe and what she can no longer unknow.

Bessemans gives Helene a different type of performance. She’s more aware of the stakes and more willing to push against the safety of inaction. The sister dynamic gives the short a needed emotional line, because without it, the film could become entirely mission-driven. Their relationship deepens the story of resistance. Eva isn’t only confronting Nazis, occupation, and violence. She’s confronting the uncomfortable fact that someone close to her has already crossed a line she was afraid to approach.

Felix Meyer and Michel Bauwens lend gravity to Pierre and Gérard, and the film uses them as part of a moral atmosphere rather than as oversized figures of wartime bravery. That restraint matters. Resistance stories often fall into the trap of making courage look too easy, too instinctive, or too inevitable. THE RESISTANCE is more compelling when it understands courage as a series of frightening, imperfect decisions made by people who’d rather live.

Shot in Belgium with a nearly entirely Belgian cast and crew, the film benefits from an environment that feels closer to memory than reconstruction. The interiors carry a hush that suggests danger pressing against the walls, while the night scenes and period detail give the operation a tactile feel. Connor Van Bodell’s cinematography is centered on shadow, lamplight, and confined spaces, which suits a story about people learning to move under surveillance.

What keeps THE RESISTANCE from becoming merely another solemn period short is its attention to willful denial. Eva’s sheltered world isn’t presented as innocent in the purest sense. It’s a protected position, and the film is interested in what it costs to maintain that protection when others are being hunted, marked, rounded up, and sent away. The question isn’t whether evil exists. The question is how long someone can pretend distance makes them uninvolved.

Schwan’s film appears to understand that Holocaust stories require care. That care includes refusing the easiest comparisons while acknowledging why stories of resistance remain so important in the long run. THE RESISTANCE is about a specific act of defiance, but it’s also about the moment morality has to become public.

THE RESISTANCE has the qualities that tend to stay with viewers after a block ends. It has a clear hook, strong visual identity, emotion, and a story compact enough to land without feeling less important. Some character growth would benefit from more room, and the film’s ambition occasionally presses against the walls of its runtime. Even so, the short seems built on the right instinct. Placing fear beside extraordinary consequence and asking what action might look like when silence becomes unbearable. THE RESISTANCE doesn’t need to inflate heroism to make it meaningful. Its power comes from the opposite. It views bravery as fragile, dangerous, and human, then follows a young woman to the point where looking away is no longer an option.

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[photo courtesy of VELOCITY FILMS]

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