Original subtitles

(volcano thundering)

(dramatic music)

(dinosaur roaring)

(props whirring)

(thunder crashing)

I had the wrong gender, the wrong background,

and the wrong age.

Nevertheless, I headed out to fight

against arrogant generals,

against the men of the Church

and the English who ruled our country.

Because God had said to me you must liberate France.

My short life went by in a flash.

My story sounds like it was made up.

And yet it's true.

(dramatic music)

(somber music) (water bubbling)

(water splashing)

Who knows what life I would have had

if there wasn't a war?

(objects splashing)

Maybe I would have fallen in love

and watched my children grow up.

But God had a different plan for me.

It was the May of 1429.

We had been fighting the English for days.

Les Tourelles, the fort in front of Orleans,

was the symbol of English rule in France.

We only had to take this fortress,

then Orleans would be freed.

Lord grant us victory and stand by me through the danger.

In repentance I confess my sins.

I didn't fast on Friday,

I was quick-tempered, I argued with Metz.

And I disagreed with Saint Margaret.

I absolve you of your sins.

In the name of the Father,

the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

All these men led me to this point.

They believed in me, and I in them.

(soldiers roaring) Forward!

(metal clanging)

Get up the ladders, men!

(soldiers groaning)

Scale the walls!

(soldier shouting)

Press forward, men!

Forward!

Keep the ladders up!

(soldier screaming)

(ladder crashing)

Get up there!

(suspenseful music)

Metz, crossbow.

(tense music)

(arrows thwipping)

When I was wounded,

I thought now it's over.

(Joan collapsing)

But that was only the beginning.

(stone grinding)

(soft music)

A few years earlier,

I hadn't known much more than my village in Lorraine.

(chimes tinkling)

It was called Domrémy.

(pig snorting) Father was head

of the community.

He looked after not only our family,

but everyone in the village.

Even during the war, for as long as I can remember.

(blood spattering)

Hands off.

Go inside and help your mother.

But I felt more and more

that I wasn't like the others.

I often went to the forest alone.

Or to the small church.

(woodpecker pecking)

The saints belonged to me.

They were my friends.

I felt safe with them.

(fabric scrubbing)

(door creaking)

Your daughter will clean out the stable.

Yeah, where is the brat?

Tell me.

Not here.

Where is she hangin' around?

That stubborn little mule.

I've had enough.

She needs a husband, so we can relax.

He can fight with her!

And she better not disobey me. (dishes clattering)

Jacques, why do you want that?

She is a good and a devout girl.

But you just want to get rid of her.

I'd still be happy if she's married.

She's always running off to the church

or off in the forest, talking to herself.

The whole village is gossiping about it.

I just don't know anymore.

Is she mad or what?

My mother had a big heart.

I learnt everything from her.

And then on her wedding night,

Saint Margaret just ran away.

She cut her hair real short.

And then she put on some men's clothing

and then she lived as a monk in a monastery.

Why did she wear men's clothes?

(mother sighing)

Well,

she wanted to protect herself from men

and stay a virgin.

Why is that?

She wanted to only belong to God.

She could have become a nun, right?

You and your questions.

Time to go to bed.

(soft music)

The story of Saint Margaret

wouldn't leave me alone.

I felt so close to her.

I could trust her with all of my troubles.

Especially my biggest fear.

I don't want this boy.

So I have to go to strangers.

I don't want to leave.

I don't even know him.

You must simply not return the wedding vows.

But,

yes.

And Father?

How shall I explain it to him?

(voices whispering)

Tell him you have to go another way.

The way which is prescribed for you by God.

Tell him you are destined for something higher

than marriage.

(Joan groaning)

But he will hit me if I disobey him.

(dramatic music)

(voices whispering)

The pain will quickly pass, child.

Our country had been at war for nearly 100 years.

Many people had fled from the English and Burgundians,

who had united against France.

We had nobody to protect us.

Our king had hidden himself away and didn't want to fight.

There were more and more raids in our area.

The English were getting closer.

That's why people who had had to leave their villages

often passed by us.

I tell you, they're beasts.

They have burnt down everything.

They have raped our women.

Everything is gone.

My brother

is dead now.

My sisters

all slain.

And our king.

What's he doing, huh?

The king will not abandon us.

Come on, he will sit around until France's last corner

is lost to the English.

What kind of a king does not even try

to stand up to the enemy

and abandons women and children?

(dramatic music)

(fire roaring) Mama!

It is said a virgin will come out of the forest

and liberate France for us.

You are not the only one who wants that.

And let me say to you, it will happen in the end.

We pray the suffering will end soon.

Yes, we pray.

This damned war.

(fire crackling)

I could see it.

I could feel it.

This suffering, this misery.

It made me so angry and so helpless.

(tense music)

Everyone's just talking, but no one's doing anything.

Father is always complaining.

(sighing) Someone just has to do something!

Oh, Lord.

Lord, forgive me, I swore, I spoke your name in vain.

(voices whispering) (eerie music)

You must begin.

You must begin and go to the king.

(voices echoing)

Me?

That's insane.

I can't leave home.

You can't stay here any longer.

You must begin and go to the king.

(rain pattering)

No, leave me alone.

I'm not listening to you.

Trust us.

Trust in God, little one.

I'm only a lowly farm girl.

I've never held a sword before.

I can't lead a war, I can't even fight!

God has chosen you to help the king.

God wants you to liberate France.

Liberate Orleans and you will see that it is true.

Trust in God and everyone will believe in you.

(soft music)

Where shall I go?

Tell me now.

Go to Vaucouleurs.

Go to the commander.

He will give you to the ones who will lead you to the king.

Shall I tell father?

No, I'll just go.

Tomorrow?

Where is that wretched girl?

I had considered everything

for long enough.

(light music)

Now my new life was about to begin.

Time was limited.

Northern France had already been conquered.

The English besieged Orleans.

If they won there, nobody would be able to stop them.

First I went to Vaucouleurs.

To get to the king,

I needed help from the captain of Baudricourt.

(hammer clinking)

Baudricourt.

Captain Baudricourt.

Captain Baudricourt, listen to me.

It is a shame that half of France

has got these awful English and Burgundians occupying us,

and we're just sitting around?

(tense music)

(box scraping)

Baudricourt!

Give me men and lead me to the king.

God has chosen me to liberate France

and to lead him to the throne.

And you want to liberate us?

(men laughing)

Everyone's heard the prophecy

that a virgin will save France.

And you think it's gonna be you (chuckling)?

How do you want to lead the war with the English, huh?

You can tend sheep perhaps,

but can you actually wield a sword, huh?

I will learn. (men laughing)

Who's that? oh, I feel much safer.

Not sure.

I saw her hanging around yesterday morning.

Give her to me, I know what to do with a virgin.

(men laughing)

The English are shaking in their boots.

I thought that people in the city had more brains.

Look at yourselves.

You have nothing left.

You haven't won even a single battle.

Do you want to resign yourselves to fate

and be eternally oppressed by the English?

God has spoken to me.

Our Lord has commanded me, and I will fight.

While I'm alive, I won't let any living person down.

I am your only hope.

Follow me or you will have lost.

My God, what is this madness?

Stand for a free France!

Yeah, but can she fight?

Let's try her out.

Come.

(swords clanging) (light music)

Metz and Poulegny

were the first to take me seriously.

Sometimes, at any rate.

Protect your head from above, attack from below.

One more time.

I can't do it.

That wasn't bad just now.

When?

Well, basically every time.

(horse whinnying)

Again.

(swords clanging)

Ah, it's not working!

(dramatic music)

I need men's clothing.

What?

I want to have men's clothes.

So, I heard someone here wants men's clothing?

I'm serious.

And I will tell you something serious.

What you're planning is blasphemy.

Joan, he's right.

You'll be burnt at the stake as a witch.

As a woman, you can't wear men's clothing.

You can't do that.

Yeah, I can.

Joan.

Joan!

If someone decides that she's evil,

then she'll definitely have lost.

You don't need trousers for that.

There are plenty of other reasons.

What do you mean?

Well, perhaps you know where her voices come from,

whether they are really from God?

She could have also been possessed by the devil.

You don't seriously mean that.

No, of course not.

But others could think that.

Enough women have been burnt

because Satan had supposedly whispered something to them.

No way.

Just look at her.

Could she be evil?

Just looking at her won't achieve much.

Doesn't matter.

I am on her side no matter what.

(soft music)

And I will still teach her to fight.

(bright music)

Of course I knew that a woman

wasn't allowed to wear men's clothes.

But I was an exception.

I needed trousers for my mission.

They should show that I'm strong,

that I am a soldier among soldiers.

And that I could fight just as well as they could.

So cut here.

No.

Here.

(Poulegny scoffing)

Cut it like these ones.

What's so good about this hair?

No man will want a girl with short hair.

I don't need a man, I need soldiers.

No!

I'm not doing it.

Come on, do it!

We're talking and talking and out there,

Orleans has been besieged for months,

the people there are practically starving!

Do it!

Do it now.

Very well.

Hold here.

(knife sawing)

How do you actually know how to beat the English?

There's not much to know.

Hold here.

Pile in with as many men as possible

and wear them down until they give up.

Explain that to the generals on the ground

who have been leading the war for 20 years.

They may be more experienced than me,

but I have more courage.

(chuckling) That is something I hadn't thought about.

(upbeat music)

(sword clanging) Yeah!

(man straining)

Nine weeks had already gone by.

Hardly anyone in Vaucouleurs still doubted me.

I was ready.

(crowd applauding)

But Captain Baudricourt wouldn't let me go yet.

(Joan straining) (swords clanging)

(crowd applauding)

(man crashing)

Are you scared of me?

(man grunting)

(crowd cheering)

(tense music)

(swords clanging)

So many people have come here because of her.

There must be something to her and her story.

Be careful.

What if she's some kind of a fraud?

So?

Why did you hear her confession?

Well, yeah, she's, you know, she's quite.

Don't we all want it to be true?

Something about her mission makes me want to believe.

(soft music)

At last,

Baudricourt gave me a horse and sword

and sent a letter of recommendation to King Karl.

I also received an escort, a couple soldiers.

And the best thing was my two loyal companions.

On the way to the king,

we had to battle through enemy territory.

The English and their allies were everywhere.

Karl held court in Chinon, a fortress in the west.

I was not welcome there.

It doesn't matter what she says.

We simply cannot let some obscure little farm girl

see the king.

But she comes to us at an opportune moment.

The prophesied virgin.

The people believe in her.

Have you seen how many have followed her?

That may be,

but if she turns out to be a fraud, we shall be to blame.

So she can't speak before the court.

Well, she doesn't have to.

At the reception, afterwards only the king and her.

Ah, good, no witnesses.

Finally, they let me see him.

Our king.

He had not yet been crowned because of the war.

They tell me you hear voices.

Yes, the Lord has sent me to you.

Whose voices are they?

They belong to Saint Catherine,

the archangel Michael, and Saint Margaret.

(tense music)

Stand up.

Tell me about it.

You must be on the throne.

That is God's will and he has sent me.

Give me soldiers and I will defeat the English.

I'm the only one that can help you.

You want to be the prophesied virgin?

Only I know how to fulfill it, yes.

Only I know the Lord's advice.

I should believe you?

The saints have spoken to me.

(chuckling) If that's true.

Your Highness.

Nothing could have stopped the English until now,

believe me.

Give me soldiers

and in just a few weeks, I will lead you to the throne.

[Voiceover] He would rely on me, I was certain of that.

But I had no idea how many more tests still lay ahead of me.

(water pouring)

You don't need to be afraid, my child.

It was said that a virgin

cannot be possessed by the devil.

(tense music)

Virgin.

(water pouring)

But that still wasn't enough for them.

They wanted proof that I had actually been sent by God.

(footsteps echoing)

And how does one find that out?

By endless weeks of questioning.

A commission of important men should test me.

It was as if they wanted to crawl inside me

and listen to my voices.

Why did you come to the king?

My voices told me that God

has great sympathy for the French people.

They said I should go to the king and to not be afraid.

If God wants to liberate France,

doesn't he need soldiers for that?

If we do take up weapons, we will win with God.

You are a woman.

How can you presume to tell us what is to be done?

Your honor, Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge first

before she let Adam have a taste.

There are enough advisors here.

Now why should the king listen to you, of all people?

Because my advice is from Heaven.

(dramatic music)

It was exasperating.

They tortured me with their questions.

I was sent by God and yet my fate lay in human hands.

I had so much power in me.

And I was condemned to idleness.

(chair clattering) (Joan screaming)

You say that you heard voices from Heaven?

Do you claim that God speaks to a farm girl?

God speaks to whomever he wants.

And how do your voices speak, in what dialect?

In a more understandable dialect than yours, sir.

Let's leave off the voices for now.

From Heaven or Hell, it's quite irrelevant.

It's not.

It's relevant to me.

And it will bring harm to the king if she is a fraud.

This is about France, not theology.

If you know everything, what will happen now?

I will liberate Orleans.

The dauphin is appointed king in Reims.

Paris will be once more under Karl's rule.

And France will be free.

The prophet has spoken.

Perhaps you could put our minds at ease

and give us some proof of your divine calling.

I didn't come here to give you any signs.

Lead me to Orleans,

then I will give you the signs for which I was sent.

And then I had to wait

until the men had made a decision about me.

It seemed that my entire life consisted of waiting.

(dramatic music)

(sword sliding)

And?

He's letting us go.

Joan!

(bright music) (water splashing)

What did they say?

The commission came to a good decision.

What did they say, exactly?

You must tell me from the beginning.

Okay, the following was proclaimed.

The king has considered the virgin's test

and nothing evil can be found in the girl.

We can go!

(Joan yelling) (triumphant music)

I went to Orleans with only a few soldiers.

More and more people joined us.

Some called me the Angel of God.

The people in the occupied city hoped for rescue.

Hoped for me.

The English were about to get a very clear message from me.

How long?

One side's enough.

Title?

King of England and Duke of Bedford.

Duke of Bedford.

You who call yourself Regent of the Kingdom of France.

Hand over to the virgin sent here by God,

the King of Heaven,

the keys to all of the cities that you have taken.

Have you read this?

Someone declaring war on us.

Some woman.

I am prepared to make peace if you leave France right now

and give back everything that you have taken from us.

If you don't do this, know that

(sword slamming)

I will chase you out of our country.

And, man for man, I'll drive you out.

Have you changed anything?

No.

Your loyal servant would never change anything

without asking you first.

I never received a reply.

It didn't matter to me.

There were many smaller fortresses around Orleans

which were occupied by the English.

In a few days, we had conquered most of them.

But the last bastion was also the strongest,

the Les Tourelles fort.

There the battle would be decided.

(dramatic music)

I was so sure that we would do it.

But then.

(arrow firing)

(ominous music)

I knew I was going to die.

But God held out His hand to me.

Joan?

Joan, wake up.

Joan, we're at the camp.

Joan.

Joan?

(Joan groaning)

Drink this.

Joan, drink this.

I don't want that.

We have to pull the arrow out of your shoulder.

Oh, have I been shot?

(Joan shouting)

Where are they?

Who?

The English.

There's no point.

We're retreating.

Where is my banner?

Give me my banner (groaning).

Why are you standing around?

Forward! (men cheering)

(soldiers roaring)

(dramatic music)

(metal clanging)

(soldier groaning)

(soldiers shouting)

(arrows whistling)

Up there!

Get up there!

Get up there, men!

(metal sliding)

(metal clanging)

(triumphant music)

(men cheering)

I had sworn to Heaven and to myself

that I'd avenge all the suffering in France.

We had done it.

Thank you, dear God.

Thank you.

(men cheering)

We did it!

All right!

(men cheering)

Victory! Victory!

Then we went to Reims

so we could finally crown Karl.

(bells ringing)

I stood next to him with our banner.

I always carried it.

It was with me in the battle and suffered as such.

But it should also share in the glory.

(Karl chuckling)

France had a crowned king once again.

It was the most wonderful day of my life.

(somber music)

(triumphant music)

You did what you promised.

God granted us victory.

But everyone followed you.

You are the real thing,

(Karl chuckling)

the prophesied virgin.

Your Highness, we must go.

I'm coming.

Noble king.

Nothing else stands in our way.

Now the English fear us.

We must continue to fight,

until we have driven them all out of our country.

We will do that.

That shall be advised, Highness.

After the battle, it's time for the diplomats.

And it will be time for the warlords to rest,

to lay their weapons down and to polish their swords.

I know that.

(dramatic music)

I will not rest until all of France is free.

At first, the king allowed me to continue.

On the way to Paris, we were able to win back many cities.

But then we ran out of luck.

Before Paris, we suffered a dreadful loss.

The royal army was disbanded.

Just a few soldiers followed me

on my campaign from city to city.

It was a hopeless fight.

Lord, what shall I do?

Please, tell me what I should do.

(somber music)

Come.

It's over now.

Joan, that was it.

Why won't you talk to me?

My voices fell silent.

But I continued to fight.

(suspenseful music)

(prisoners screaming)

I managed without God's help.

Get in there, prisoner!

Perhaps that was the reason

why I fell into enemy hands.

(woman sobbing)

But in prison, my strength and my voices returned.

What are you staring at?

My king will free me.

And then God have mercy!

(woman shrieking)

I'm innocent.

But nobody came. I'm innocent!

Shut up in there!

(prisoners groaning)

We could try to buy her freedom.

The English will certainly try her as a witch.

But we were convinced that she wasn't.

Just leave it.

It has to end with this virgin in disguise

and these supposed voices she hears.

It's hocus pocus.

Our coffers are empty.

We cannot fight an internal war.

Don't forget that God sent her to us.

God will stand by her, then.

If it's only a matter of money, it can be obtained.

Just think,

if France's heroine ends up being burnt at the stake,

the English will humiliate us.

And you.

That's not the issue here.

I can't just abandon Joan.

She brought the throne to me.

But who will remember that later?

We are making the right decision, Your Highness.

Believe me.

(ominous music)

Rouen.

The trial was carried out by the church there,

at the behest of the English.

Witchcraft, superstition.

I had done none of the things they accused me of.

But it was only about power.

Swear on the holy gospels

that you will answer all questions with the truth.

You call yourself my judge.

Be careful what you do

because I was sent by God and you are in great danger.

Who told you that you should wear men's clothes?

My voices. How do you know

that your voices come from God and not from the devil?

(Joan screaming)

(chains rattling)

You have tried to escape several times.

It is the right of any prisoner

to escape.

You bore weapons and killed people.

Your saints, do they hate the English?

They love what God loves

and hate what God hates.

You don't want to recant?

Can I hope for mercy?

I have done nothing against God or against my faith.

(dramatic music)

(rats chittering)

The torture and the fear of fire weakened me.

I told them what they wanted to hear.

Denied my voices.

And wore women's clothes again.

But instead of the freedom I hoped for,

the final judgment was life in prison.

(gate clanging)

(gate slamming)

And my repeal didn't suit their plan.

They wanted to see a witch burn.

And they used any means necessary to achieve this.

I would rather die than to stay in this prison!

Hey, you out there.

Give me my things back.

I will not submit.

Not to the English.

Not to this court.

Not to these church people!

Not to anyone.

(gavel banging)

(suspenseful music)

I will live with the King in Heaven.

With the King in Heaven.

(bell tolling)

(upbeat music)