The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler

The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler (2009) is a war drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by John Kent Harrison and starring Anna Paquin as Irena Sendler. A Catholic social worker in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, Sendler used her city health department pass to enter the sealed ghetto — smuggling children out in tool crates, ambulances, and under sedated covers. By 1943, she and her network had moved roughly 2,500 children to safe houses across the city.

She kept a coded record of every child's real name, buried in jars beneath a neighbor's apple tree, intending to restore their identities after the war. The Gestapo eventually broke through her network, arrested her, and sentenced her to death. Her colleagues in the Żegota resistance bribed the execution squad on the morning it was scheduled to happen. Goran Visnjic and Marcia Gay Harden appear in supporting roles.

Made for CBS, the film works because Paquin plays Sendler without martyrdom — as someone who is afraid, improvising, and just keeps going anyway. That restraint is what gives the story its weight. Stream The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler (2009) online on iFILM.