Rome, Open City
1945 film by Roberto Rossellini
Rome, Open City (Italian: Roma città aperta), also released as Open City, is a 1945 Italian neorealist war drama film directed by Roberto Rossellini and co-written by Sergio Amidei, Celeste Negarville and Federico Fellini. Set in Rome in 1944, the film follows a diverse group of characters coping under the Nazi occupation, and centers on a Resistance fighter trying to escape the city with the help of a Catholic priest. The title refers to the status of Rome as an open city following its declaration as such on 14 August 1943. The film is the first in Rosselini's "Neorealist Trilogy", followed by Paisan (1946) and Germany, Year Zero (1948).
Open City is considered one of the most important and representative works of Italian neorealism, and an important stepping stone for Italian filmmaking as a whole. It was one of the first post-war Italian pictures to gain major acclaim and accolades internationally, winning the prestigious Palme d'Or at the 1946 Cannes Film Festival and being nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar at the 19th Academy Awards. It launched director Rosselini, screenwriter Fellini, and actress Anna Magnani into the international spotlight.
In 2008, the film was included on the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage’s 100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978".
Plot
In 1944, on the eve of Rome's liberation by the Allies, communist and local leader of the Italian Resistance Luigi Ferraris (hiding under the alias of engineer Giorgio Manfredi) eludes capture by the SS. He takes refuge at the home of Francesco, another resistance fighter. With the help of Francesco's pregnant fiancée Pina, Luigi contacts Don Pietro, a Catholic priest, who helps deliver money and messages to a group of partisans outside the city.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Rome, Open City” as 1945 film by Roberto Rossellini. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1945 film by Roberto Rossellini. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q721146. VIAF identifies the subject as 316751667. The Library of Congress control number is n82255142. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1945, 1944, 1943 and 1946.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rome, Open City” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.