La Vie Devant Soi (aka Madame Rosa) (1977)

An elderly woman (Simone Signoret), who is a Holocaust survivor and former prostitute, takes care of children to support herself. Some are abandoned, some are the children of working prostitutes. But her favorite is an Algerian boy (Samy Ben Youb) left by his pimp father and prostitute mother some 11 years earlier. Based on the novel by Romain Gary and directed by Moshe Mizrahi. Winner of the best foreign language film Oscar, this is a bittersweet tale of aging, life and death, survival and the necessity of love if one is to exist. Viewed in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, its message of the great warmth and affection between an old Jewish woman and a young Arab boy is still relevant today. More than forty years have passed since the movie and sadly, nothing has changed. Signoret is magnificent, she brings over three decades of experience to her role and invests it with the stature only a great actress can bring to it. With Claude Dauphin, Gabriel Jabbour, Michal Bat Adam, Stella Annicette and Costa-Gavras (yes, the director).