After years spent working as a prostitute in her Italian village, middle-aged Mamma Roma has saved enough money to buy herself a fruit stand so that she can have a respectable middle-class life and reestablish contact with the 16-year-old son she abandoned when he was an infant. But her former pimp threatens to expose her sordid past, and her troubled son seems destined to fall into a life of crime and violence.

Anna Magnani
as Mamma Roma

Ettore Garofolo
as Ettore

Franco Citti
as Carmine

Silvana Corsini
as Bruna

Luisa Loiano
as Biancofiore

Paolo Volponi
as Priest

Luciano Gonini
as Zacaria

Vittorio La Paglia
as Il Signor Pellissier

Piero Morgia
as Piero

Franco Ceccarelli
as Carletto