The Unknown Woman

It’s 20 years since Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso won the best foreign-language Oscar. Nowadays he’s on a seemingly endless project to complete Sergio Leone's film-work about the Leningrad siege. But here he takes a break to make for himself a multi-award-winning dark thriller that's also a moving melodrama with an Ennio Morricone score. Russian actress Ksenia Rappoport plays a Ukrainian immigrant to Italy. Her seemingly quiet country life in her 30's gradually turns out to be not what it seems, as the horrors of her past life lead up to a violent present - where Michele Placido features as a particularly convincing Mafia sadist and Rappoport sustains our sympathy for her in spite of everything.

NW England premiere – thanks to Transmedia Releasing