Mariana's Room (2025)

Adapted from the novel by Israeli author Aharon Appelfeld, director Emmanuel Finkiel’s third film about the Holocaust takes the audience to Chernovitz, Ukraine in 1943, where a mother flees with her 12-year-old son Hugo (Artem Kyryk) through the sewers and entrusts him to an old friend for safe keeping. That friend is the Mariana of the title, played by Mélanie Thierry. She’s a sex worker who hides Hugo from the Nazis by stashing him away in her closet. But even sealed away, Hugo is still able to hear the sounds and get secret glimpses of what’s going on around him. He can still sense the atrocities of war and what’s being done to his people, but the upside is it also includes what’s going on in Mariana’s bedroom. And the rest Hugo fills in with his imagination. Luckily viewers don’t have to use their imaginations when it comes to Mélanie’s mams. We get three distinctive scenes where she flashes her phenomenal French funbags, so you may want to leave some room in your pants!