With their stripped-down aesthetic, largely nonprofessional casts, and unorthodox approaches to storytelling, these intensely emotional works were international sensations and came to define the neorealist movement. Shot in battle-ravaged Italy and Germany.
Rome open city: When the Nazis occupied Rome, a brave few fought against it. An underground agent who is cornered by the Germans in a certain quarter of Rome, flees the Germans. In the course of his flight he imperils his resistance friends.
Paisan: Set during the liberation of Italy at the end of World War II, and taking place across the country, from Sicily to the northern Po Valley. Looks at the struggles of different cultures to communicate and of people living their everyday lives in extreme circumstances.
Germany year zero: The concluding chapter of Roberto Rossellini's War Trilogy is the most devastating, a portrait of an obliterated Berlin seen through the eyes of a 12-year old boy. Living in a bombed-out apartment building with his sick father and two older siblings, young Edmund is mostly left to wander unsupervised, getting ensnared in the black market schemes of a group of teenagers and coming under the nefarious influence of a Nazi-sympathizing ex-teacher.… (more)
(summary from another edition)