Her face simply wasn’t beautiful enough for the new medium of film, or so she was told. Renée Falconetti had long been a star of the Paris stage in the 1920s when Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer tapped her for the lead in “The Passion of Joan of Arc” (1928). The story of the legendary martyr would go on to become one of the key works in the history of film. Falconetti’s first major film role was destined to remain her last. With an essayist’s hand, Mirko Stopar takes a closer look at the star’s eventful life. We see how single mother Falconetti fought to establish herself, how she squandered her fortune on her own theatre and casino, before dying in poverty in Buenos Aires. The documentary draws clear parallels between the star’s life and Dreyer’s film, which for decades was shown only in edited versions before the director’s original final cut was rediscovered.