The story of Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie and her extraordinary scientific discoveries—through the prism of her marriage to husband Pierre—and the seismic and transformative effects their discovery of radium had on the 20th century.

A melodrama about children, the child murders that the film’s title refers to are the million and one ways that children’s souls are ravaged by neglect, unkindness and cruelty, even though several physical deaths take place in the story.