Every November an interfaith retreat is held at the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps in Poland, where more than 1 million people, nearly all of them European Jews, were exterminated by the Nazis.

Why would someone participate in such a retreat? How could anyone attempt to pray or meditate in a place that silences the heart and chills the soul? Filmed over a period of seven days, In Spite of Darkness tells the story of five retreatants—among them, a Rabbi, an atheist, and a Catholic priest—and how they come face to face not only with their own vulnerabilities and complicity but with new strength, peace, and glimmers of hope.