Germany Year Zero (1948) [The Criterion Collection]

Director: Roberto Rossellini
Writers: Roberto Rossellini (screenplay), Carlo LizzaniMax Kolpé (dialogue)
Stars: Edmund Moeschke, Ernst Pittschau, Ingetraud Hinze

The concluding chapter of Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy is the most devastating, a portrait of an obliterated Berlin, seen through the eyes of a twelve-year-old boy. Living in a bombed-out apartment building with his sick father and two older siblings, young Edmund is mostly left to wander unsupervised, getting ensnared in the black-market schemes of a group of teenagers and coming under the nefarious influence of a Nazi-sympathizing ex-teacher. Germany Year Zero is a daring, gut-wrenching look at the consequences of fascism, for society and the individual.

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