Roberto Rossellini was an Italian director born in Rome, a central founder of Italian neorealism and one of the movement's defining voices. Rome, Open City, shot amid the rubble of a city barely liberated from Nazi occupation, and Paisan, an episodic chronicle of the Italian campaign, established a rough, documentary-inflected style using non-professional actors and real locations that reshaped postwar cinema worldwide. Germany, Year Zero extended this approach to the ruins of Berlin, while his later collaborations with Ingrid Bergman, including Stromboli and Journey to Italy, shifted toward introspective studies of marital estrangement that deeply influenced the French New Wave. Rossellini's insistence on shooting amid real devastation with everyday people gave Italian neorealism its enduring moral authority and international impact. Read more