The Desert and the Rose is an intimate spiritual portrait of Jeanne Jugan, the charismatic Frenchwoman who founded the religious congregation of the Little Sisters of the Poor in 1839 but was then unjustly removed from the leadership of the new congregation.
Éloi Leclerc's imaginative recreation of Jeanne's inner experience from the time she was condemned to inaction, silence and solitude shows that true riches and perfect joy do not lie in what is visible but in what we carry in our hearts.