Germany Year Zero preceded by Bambini in città

Director: Roberto Rossellini, Luigi Comencini

1948 / 85min / DCP

Shot in the ruins of postwar Berlin, Rossellini’s staggeringly despairing film—peopled almost entirely with nonprofessional actors, including, in the central role, young Edmund Meschke—follows a towheaded 12-year-old enduring unspeakable agonies in the act of daily survival: in the overcrowded family home his father is bedridden and ailing, while out on the rubble-strewn streets he faces the hazards of ill-intentioned black marketeers and a Nazi with a predilection for underaged boys. The tragic ending is as shocking as it seems, after a fashion, inevitable. Preceded by Bambini in città, Comencini’s documentary report on life in bomb-ravaged Milan, focused particularly on the children who wander and play in the wreckage of the city.

Germany Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini, 1948, 73 mins)

Bambini in città (Luigi Comencini, 1946, 12 mins)

Part of Maybe If You Smile They Will One Day All Return