Madame Rosa

Madame Rosa lives on the sixth floor of a walk-up in Pigalle. She is a retired prostitute, Jewish, and survived Auschwitz. Now she looks after the children of other prostitutes. The eldest is Momo, an Algerian boy she is raising as a Muslim. He asks about his parents and she keeps putting the answer off. As she ages there are fewer children, and Momo starts looking after her. Her one fear is hospital; his one concern is keeping that promise. Moshé Mizrahi directs the French film; a hundred and five minutes, with Simone Signoret as Rosa. It is adapted from the novel Romain Gary published under the name Emile Ajar. It won the foreign language film Oscar in 1978.