The Immigrant

What's it about:

Ewa Cybulski and her sister sail to New York from their native Poland in search of a new start and the American dream. When they reach Ellis Island, doctors discover that Magda is ill, and the two women are separated. Ewa is released onto the mean streets of Manhattan, while her sister is quarantined. Alone, with nowhere to turn and desperate to reunite with Magda, Ewa quickly falls prey to Bruno, a charming but wicked man who takes her in and forces her into prostitution. The arrival of Orlando, a dashing stage magician who is also Bruno’s cousin, restores her belief in herself and her hopes for a brighter future. This is her only chance to escape the nightmare in which she finds herself.

What the critics say:

Gray's movie is an almost flawlessly articulated example of the kind of thing we like to say they just don't make any more: serious, adult, character-driven and impassioned.
- Geoff Pevere, Globe and Mail

An astonishingly beautiful, irresistibly grim movie ...
- G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle

This is Gray's most mature work, and the picture raises Cotillard to a select pantheon.
- David Thomson, The New Republic

The film, too, changes shape as it goes along, beginning as something resembling social realism before developing into an old-fashioned "woman's picture."
- Jake Wilson, Sydney Morning Herald