If eyes are a window to the soul, then Sophia Loren’s spirit has been on display for decades on screens big — and now, small.

At 86, the Italian actor came out of retirement to star in “The Life Ahead,” directed by her son, Edoardo Ponti, and released on Netflix on Nov. 13.

In the film, Madame Rosa (Loren), an aging Holocaust survivor who offers day care for the children of local prostitutes, forges an unlikely bond with a bitter street kid (Ibrahima Gueye) who robbed her.

Gueye, 14, delivers an incredible performance as well.

Critics and audiences are raving about the performance, and many are calling for Loren to take home the Academy Award for Best Actress (she last won an Oscar in 1962 for her raw and unflinching role as Cesira in the post-WWII foreign language anti-war film “Two Women“).

If you don’t quite believe the hype, the trailer may change your mind:

The Life Ahead, a contemporary adaptation of “La vie devant soi,” (The Life Before Us) in some ways reflects the early years of the iconic actor — Loren spent her childhood in poverty in Rome, but all that changed when she was encouraged to enroll in acting lessons after entering a beauty pageant,

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She launched her film career at age 16 in 1950, and is now one of the last surviving icons from Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Loren, who seldomly accepts new roles, recently explained to Variety that family has come first over the past several decades:

“I don’t want to work for stories that I don’t feel because I wouldn’t know how to do it. I really gave myself to my children completely, and it was wonderful, because I spent all my time with the two families [Carlo’s and Edoardo’s] in America, without working, just being with them all the time.”