Lorna's Silence (2009)

Image credit: Christine Plenus

THE PRICE OF CITIZENSHIP Arta Dobroshi in Lorna's Silence

From the outstanding Belgian filmmakers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne (Rosetta), here's another closely observed, sociologically astute, and amazingly naturalistic drama about moral compromise as a by-product of economic need. Lorna, an Albanian woman living in Belgium (played by the captivating Arta Dobroshi), sets out to achieve her capitalist dream of opening a snack bar with her Albanian boyfriend by letting a mobster broker a sham marriage to a local junkie (Jérémie Renier) for Belgian citizenship. As she ditches him to wed a Russian thug willing to pay big for his own legal 
entrée, Lorna's Silence becomes a stunning study of 
one desperate woman's conscience. A–