Directed by Roberto Rossellini • 1946 • Italy
Starring Carmela Sazio, Robert Van Loon, Dots M. Johnson
Roberto Rossellini’s follow-up to his breakout ROME OPEN CITY was the ambitious, enormously moving PAISAN, which consists of six episodes 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. With its documentary-like visuals and intermingled cast of actors and nonprofessionals, Italians and their American liberators, this look at the struggles of different cultures to communicate and of people to live their everyday lives in extreme circumstances is equal parts charming sentiment and vivid reality. A long-missing treasure of Italian cinema, PAISAN is available here in its full original release version.
Up Next in Directed by Roberto Rossellini
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Germany Year Zero
Directed by Roberto Rossellini • 1948 • France, Italy, West Germany
Starring Edmund Meschke, Ernst Pittschau, Ingetraud HinzeThe concluding chapter of Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy is the most devastating, a portrait of an obliterated Berlin, seen through the eyes of a twelve-year-old boy. L...
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L’amore
Directed by Roberto Rossellini • 1948 • Italy
Roberto Rosselini directs Anna Magnani in two short films about love and loneliness. In the first, a woman makes a last-ditch attempt to save her relationship over the phone. In the second, a peasant woman believes she is pregnant with the son of God.
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The Flowers of St. Francis
Directed by Roberto Rossellini • 1950 • Italy
Starring Brother Nazario Gerardi, Brother Severino Pisacane, Esposito BonaventuraIn a series of simple and joyous vignettes, director Roberto Rossellini and co-writer Federico Fellini lovingly convey the universal teachings of the People’s Saint: hu...
