Lorna's Silence dispenses with the idea of loading you with exposition by picking up with our protagonist as she's going about her day. Lorna (Arta Dobroshi) is an Albanian emigre in Belgium who has agreed to a sham marriage to a junkie so that she can gain Belgian citizenship.

Lorna works hard all day in a laundry, juggling her illegal responsibilities as best she can. She's made a deal with a Russian gangster to become a naturalized Belgian, but she then has to leverage that to do him a favor back. Wherever we follow her, she is constantly in motion, fully engaged in getting the work in front of her done. She would love nothing more than to be free and clear of the dangerous arrangement she's made

She has to sse things through so that she can finally be with her boyfriend Sokol (Alban Ukaj) and open the little restaurant they've dreamed of for so long. None of the commitments she has made are quite as straightforward as she expects, and her moral misgivings are only the beginning of her troubles. Lorna obsesses over control of her immediate situation

Sony Pictures Classics released the Cannes 2008 award-winner on DVD at the beginning of the year (5 Jan). It's a rare example among the month's DVD releases of a movie more focused on real human relationships and consequences than one big sequence or controversial idea. None of the interactions feel as if in the service of achieving a story point instead of serving the motivations of the central characters.