The Unknown Woman

The Unknown Woman follows Irena, a Ukrainian immigrant living in a northern Italian town who sets out to find work as a housekeeper. Her search is not random: she fixes her attention on one household in particular, the Adachers, a well-off family made up of goldsmith Donato, his wife Valeria and their young daughter Tea. Irena works her way into their home and becomes a trusted presence there, though her motives for choosing this family remain hidden as the film moves between her present life and fragments of a painful past in Ukraine.

Giuseppe Tornatore wrote and directed the film, which sits between Malena and Baaria in the list of features he has directed. Kseniya Rappoport plays Irena, with Pierfrancesco Favino and Claudia Gerini as the couple, Clara Dossena as their daughter and Michele Placido as Muffa. Made with a budget of about 8 million dollars, it earned roughly 7 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.4 from around 17,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.2 from a few hundred votes.