Rosetta

Rosetta is a young woman living with her mother in a caravan park on the edge of a Belgian town. Determined to hold down a steady job and escape a life of instability, she moves between factory floors, brief openings and the daily strain of caring for a mother who drinks. Refusing offers of help, she guards her independence fiercely and pursues ordinary work with an intensity that shapes everything she does. When she meets Riquet, who works at a food stall and offers her both a job and a friendship, a way out briefly seems possible. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne directed the film and wrote the screenplay; the brothers also produced it, and it stands at the start of the run of features listed for them, followed by The Son in 2002 and later titles including The Kid with a Bike and Two Days, One Night. Émilie Dequenne leads as Rosetta, with Olivier Gourmet, Fabrizio Rongione, Anne Yernaux, Bernard Marbaix and Frédéric Bodson in supporting roles. The film was released in 1999 and runs 95 minutes. On IMDb it holds 7.4 from around 17,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.2 from 350 votes. A critics' rating of 7.8 from 31 reviews places it a little above the audience scores.