Topic: Neorealism

Direction Vittorio De Sica

Cast Lamberto Maggiorani · Enzo Staiola · Lianella Carell · Gino Saltamerenda

Synopsis After nearly two years of unemployment, Antonio (Lamberto Maggiorani) finally finds work posting bills. But he needs a bicycle to do the job. Unfortunately, he was forced to pawn his own bicycle long ago, so Antonio has to exchange his...

Direction Luchino Visconti

Cast Alain Delon · Renato Salvatori · Annie Girardot · Katina Paxinou

Synopsis It is the story of a poor family torn apart by lust and greed. Rocco (Alain Delon), a soft-spoken, idealistic young man who must deal with turmoil and competition when he and his three brothers set out to Milan in...

Direction Federico Fellini

Cast Anthony Quinn · Giulietta Masina · Richard Basehart · Aldo Silvani

Synopsis Gelsomina is sold by her very poor mother to Zampanò, an itinerant strongman. She follows him on the road ("la strada") and helps him during his shows. Zampanò ill-treats her. She meets "The Fool", a funambulist. She feels like going...

Direction Roberto Rossellini

Cast Aldo Fabrizi · Anna Magnani · Marcello Pagliero · Maria Michi

Synopsis Rome, Open City (1945) is a gripping neorealist drama set during the Nazi occupation of Rome in 1944. The film follows a group of resistance fighters, including a courageous priest and a determined engineer, as they struggle against German forces...

Direction Vittorio De Sica

Cast Carlo Battisti · Maria Pia Casilio · Lina Gennari · Memmo Carotenuto

Synopsis Umberto D. (1952) follows Umberto Domenico Ferrari, an elderly pensioner struggling to survive in post-war Rome. Facing eviction and loneliness, his only companion is his loyal dog, Flike. As Umberto navigates the indifference of society and the bureaucracy that fails...

Direction Federico Fellini

Cast Giulietta Masina · François Périer · Amedeo Nazzari · Aldo Silvani

Synopsis Nights of Cabiria (1957) follows Cabiria, a resilient but naive Roman prostitute, as she navigates a series of hopeful yet heartbreaking encounters in her search for love and redemption. Despite her tough exterior, Cabiria dreams of a better life, trusting...

Direction Roberto Rossellini

Cast Edmund Moeschke · Ernst Pittschau · Barbara Hintz · Franz-Otto Krüger

Synopsis Edmund, a young boy who lives in war-devastated Germany after the Second World War has to do all kinds of work and tricks to help his family in getting food and barely survive. One day he meets a man who...

Direction Vittorio De Sica

Cast Franco Interlenghi · Rinaldo Smordoni · Annielo Mele · Bruno Ortenzi

Synopsis Rome, after WWII. At a track near the italian city, shoeshine boys are watching horses run. Two of the boys Pasquale, an orphan, and Giuseppe, his younger friend are riding. The pair have been saving to buy a horse of...

Direction Luchino Visconti

Cast Maria Micale · Sebastiano Valastro · Antonio Arcidiacono · Giuseppe Arcidiacono

Synopsis In rural Sicily, the fishermen live at the mercy of the greedy wholesalers. One family risks everything to buy their own boat and operate independently.

Direction Pier Paolo Pasolini

Cast Anna Magnani · Franco Citti · Ettore Garofolo · Silvana Corsini

Synopsis In Pier Paolo Pasolini's beautiful drama, Mamma Roma (Anna Magnani) is an ex-prostitute who tries to leave behind her past and make a life for her and her son but her evil pimp stands in her way. Dubbed obscene by...

Direction Vittorio De Sica

Cast Francesco Golisano · Emma Gramatica · Paolo Stoppa · Guglielmo Barnabò

Synopsis Once upon a time, in the story of Vittorio De Sica's MIRACLE IN MILAN, an old woman, Lolotta (Emma Grammatica), discovered a young child in her cabbage patch. She cared for him until her death, at which time the boy,...

Direction Federico Fellini

Cast Alberto Sordi · Franco Fabrizi · Franco Interlenghi · Leopoldo Trieste

Synopsis I vitelloni (1953) follows five young men in a small Italian coastal town as they navigate the aimlessness of post-adolescence. Each character grapples with dreams, responsibilities, and the monotony of provincial life. Fausto, the charismatic womanizer, struggles with commitment, while...

Direction Giuseppe de Santis

Cast Eva Vanicek · Carla del Poggio · Massimo Girotti · Lucía Bosé

Synopsis Based on an actual incident, this is the story of five girls who are among the 200 women who answer a want ad for a modest secretarial position one rainy morning in Rome in 1951. They crowd and push their...

Direction Roberto Rossellini

Cast Ingrid Bergman · Alexander Knox · Ettore Giannini · Teresa Pellati

Synopsis An American woman (Ingrid Bergman) relocates to post-war Rome to deal with her misgivings after the death of her son.

Direction José Antonio Nieves Conde

Cast Luis Peña · María Asquerino · Francisco Arenzana · Marisa de Leza

Synopsis At the end of the Spanish Civil War, a working-class family that migrates from rural Spain to Madrid in the hopes of finding a better life, and their hopes are thwarted by Don Roque, the personfication of the oppressive social...

Direction Luigi Zampa

Cast Umberto Spadaro · Ave Ninchi · Delia Scala · Massimo Girotti

Synopsis Aldo Piscitello, a minor government clerk, is forced in 1934 to join the Fascist party. When the war comes, he finds himself able only to talk ineffectually in secret against Mussolini, even as his own son Giovanni is sent into...

Direction Luchino Visconti

Cast Anna Magnani · Walter Chiari · Tina Apicella · Gastone Renzelli

Direction Pier Paolo Pasolini

Cast Franco Citti · Silvana Corsini · Franca Pasut · Paola Guidi

Synopsis Pasolini's first film is a painfully realistic study of a pimp in Rome. Vittorio Accattone has never worked a day in his life, and has apparently made a good living prostituting his female companion, Maddalena. But her arrest begins his...

Direction Alessandro Blasetti

Cast Gino Cervi · Adriana Benetti · Giuditta Rissone · Carlo Romano

Direction Roberto Rossellini

Cast Ingrid Bergman · Mario Vitale · Renzo Cesana · Mario Sponzo

Synopsis Karen, a young woman from the baltic countries, marries fisherman Antonio to escape from a prisoners camp. But the life in Antonio's village, Stromboli, threatened by the vulcano, is a tough one and Karen can not get used to it.