Italian Neorealism

A family man travelling for work, Paolo Bianchi, meets on a train a lonely girl, Maria. He sees her again on a bus and she reveals him that she's in troubles: she's pregnant, her baby's father has left her and she doesn't know how to tell to her parents that she's not married. She asks Paolo to play the role of her husband and he accepts....

Gino, a drifter, begins an affair with inn-owner Giovanna, and they plan to get rid of her older husband.

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.

A woman from the lower class desperately tries to get her daughter into the movies.

Five portraits of actresses in their "common" life, seen as women rather than movie stars.

An Italian Countess is allied with Nationalists during the Italian-Austrian war of unification. However, she risks betraying their cause when she falls in love with an Austrian lieutenant.

During the Nazi occupation of Rome in 1944, the Resistance leader, Giorgio Manfredi, is chased by the Nazis as he seeks refuge and a way to escape.

American military personnel interact warily with a variety of Italian locals over a year and a half in the push north during the Italian Campaign of WWII as German forces make their retreat.

A young German boy faces the problems of the tough life in the immediate post-WWII Berlin.

Four-year-old Pricò becomes the subject of emotional folly by his capricious parents and negligent relatives.

Two shoeshine boys in postwar Rome, Italy save up to buy a horse, but their involvement as dupes in a burglary lands them in juvenile prison; the experience take a devastating toll on their friendship.

In post-war Italy, a working-class man's bicycle is stolen, endangering his efforts to find work. He and his son set out to find it.

An open-hearted, unrelentingly energetic orphan struggles to make the best of his life on the streets of Milan.

A portrait of the people, the defects, and the peculiarities of Naples in six different vignettes.

A married couple learns that it is possible to build an illegal house in the outskirts of Rome, as long as it is erected in one single night and has a roof.

Immediately after the war, bandits attack a truck that is transporting newlyweds Michele and Giovanna and the accountant of an agricultural cooperative charged with bringing four million lire into office.

Two criminals on the run end up working in a rice field and decide to recruit other workers for their next robbery.

Five women interviewed for a job in 1951 Rome. A staircase collapsed during chaos, injuring many. The film follows how this incident impacted their different lives, some finding change, others disappointment.

A contingent of Italian prisoners of war arrive on a train from Germany after World War II to Turin. The city where Ernesto lives has been bombed, his mother is dead and his sister has gone missing.

An African-American soldier stationing in Italy refuses to make a deal with local gangsters. However, when a girl he loves turns desperately to prostitution, Jerry is forced to change his mind to save her.

The peaceful, almost idyllic life of an Italian village is interrupted during the war by the appearance of two American soldiers who keep hiding in the house of one of the villagers.

A rowdy woman is so forceful that she outdoes her husband in a loud cry against speculators who refuse poor people entrance to a block of new apartments, built after WW2. Without noticing it, she starts a people's movement, and leads a march to the capital. She returns to her village a winner, an honourable MP. Yet, she is still the same simple, fiery woman, able to get in a hair-pulling brawl with the local barmaid for the affection of her man.

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 battle. By the end of the war, Aldo has found the courage to stand up for his beliefs, but by then it is too late.

The action takes place in Lombardy after the Italian capitulation in World War II, when the area was under German occupation. The protagonist is a former soldier who returned home, but ultimately decides to join the partisans who fight against the occupiers.

A story of teenager from Rome during World War II.