Mamma Roma: dir Pier Paolo Pasolini (1962)

Pasolini’s audacious second feature is a tale of doomed maternal love set against a stark backdrop of ancient ruins and prefab apartment blocks on the desolate outskirts of Rome. Anna Magnani is superb as a middle-aged streetwalker who attempts to extricate herself from her sordid past and provide a decent life for her teenage son; the criminal underworld she thought she had escaped slowly returns to haunt her … Highlighting Pasolini’s lifelong fascination with the marginalised and dispossessed, Mamma Roma offers an unflinching, neorealistic look at the struggle for survival in postwar Italy.

In Italian with English subtitles.