Germany, Year Zero

Germany, Year Zero (Italian: Germania anno zero) is a 1948 film directed by Roberto Rossellini. It follows the life of a twelve-year-old boy in post World War II Germany. It won the Golden Leopard and the Best Director awards at the Locarno International Film Festival in 1948. As in many neorealist films, Rossellini used mainly local, non-professional actors. He filmed on locations in Berlin and intended to convey the reality in Germany the year after its near total destruction in World War II. It contains dramatic images of bombed out Berlin and of the human struggle for survival following the destruction of Nazi Germany. When explaining his ideas about realism in an interview, he said, "realism is nothing other than the artistic form of truth."