The Italian film 'The Unknown Woman' is sure to be a BIFF favourite this year – it is dark, edgy, intricately suspenseful and engrossing.

The film's shadowy and steely main character, Ukrainian Irena finds herself in Italy seeking work.

After striking up a deal with an opportunistic apartment manager, Irena displays a relentless work ethic but seems to be particularly interested in one specific apartment bearing the nameplate Adacher.

No one looks so closely at Irena – posing as one of the desperate poverty-stricken, dime a dozen immigrants in Italy looking for work – as to notice that she has taken an overpriced apartment across the street for a sum which would seem impossible based on a few hours scrubbing floors.

But Irena turns down other offers of work while strategically working her way into the lives of a wealthy Italian jeweller who lives in the building with her husband and young daughter, Tea. Irena's dark background is hinted out through violent flashbacks which see her being brutalised at the hands of pimps and Johns and seemingly dragged about with a group of sex slaves.

By what has brought her to this apartment complex and what is she looking for?

Irena methodically builds the trust of the family – and in particular that of the mother Valeria, who is going through a difficult period in the midst of a collapsing marriage.

Irena's dedication to Tea forms the backbone of the story, as she teaches the young girl – charmingly played by Clara Dossena – to defend herself against bullies with a brutality that brings flashes of Irena's dark past.

But Irena's reality is set to collapse as her past catches up with her in a dark alley in the unlikely form of two vicious Santa Clauses.

But the steely Irena – wonderfully played by Ksenia Rappoport who won a best actress award at the Italian film awards for the role – is not so easily defeated by the horrors life has inflicted on her, and the plot still has several more twists to serve up.

'The Unknown Woman' is a thriller of the top variety – it never lets the story become to predictable or simplistic for its audience.

Even when grim, it won't let you look away.

Director Guiseppe Tomatore – best known for his 1988 best foreign film Oscar Winner 'Cinema Paradiso' – shows his range here with an eerie, compelling film well schooled in the horrors of the modern world, where women from Eastern European countries are often treated like worse than cattle after falling prey to those that cater to a shadowy underworld of clients with a taste for degradation, terror and taking whatever it is they want from those not born to the same privilege.

It deserves a place at the front and centre of the Best of World Cinema showcase BIFF has included it in.

The Unknown Woman will screen tonight at 7 p.m. at the Little Theatre and again on Sunday at 6.30 p.m. at Southside Theatre