Fortunata (2017)

In August, on the outskirts of Rome, Fortunata is a woman in her thirties raising her eight-year-old daughter, Barbara, alone in a run-down neighborhood. After a failed marriage to Franco, she struggles every day to give her daughter the best upbringing she can. She goes from house to house, doing blowouts and balayage for friends and neighbors off the books, while nurturing the dream of opening her own hair salon and thereby gaining a little financial independence and finding happiness. Franco, her estranged husband, from whom Fortunata is not yet legally separated, torments her and gives her no room to start building a normal life again. Her only friend is Chicano, a drug addict whose mother, Lotte, is a foreigner suffering from Alzheimer’s. Meeting Patrizio, a child psychotherapist assigned by social services to provide Barbara with psychological support, will seem to Fortunata like an opportunity to change her life. But not everyone knows how to make the most of a good opportunity.