'The Housewife', which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, stars Naomi Watts as Hermine Ryan, an ostensibly ordinary 1950s Queens housewife who is secretly Hermine Braunsteiner, a former Nazi concentration camp guard hiding under an assumed identity. Directed by Ben Shirinian in his feature debut, the film is based on real events and dramatises how a young New York Times reporter uncovered her past around 1964, prompting deportation proceedings. The reviewer notes the film's release feels particularly resonant given a recent resurgence of far-right politics in Germany.

Based on a script by Alyssa Hill that appeared on the Black List in 2015, the story follows reporter Joseph Lelyveld (Tye Sheridan), tipped off by Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, who initially suspects Hermine's husband, construction worker Russell Ryan (Luke Evans), before immigration officer Anthony DeVito (Michael Imperioli) identifies Hermine herself as the guard responsible for sending hundreds of Jews to their deaths. Watts is praised for a demanding dual performance as a woman in denial of her past, with strong supporting turns from Sheridan, Imperioli and Lena Olin as a witness whose testimony proves pivotal at Hermine's deportation hearing.