Quickly following the breakout success of Rome, Open City, Roberto Rossellini’s Paisan ambitiously expands the scope of its predecessor to six episodes spanning all across Italy throughout its liberation campaign at the tail of the Second World War. In Sicily a woman guides American soldiers around a German mine field, in the port of Naples a black American soldier forms an unlikely kinship with a child street urchin, in Rome a G.I. confides in a young sex worker, in Southern Florence an Allied nurse searches for an old friend, in Apennine Mountains a trio of military chaplains find peace with a set of monks and in the Po delta a team of OSS operatives sneak behind enemy lines.

Related only by time, place and war, Rossellini’s episodes explore the language barriers, cultural clashes and human harmonies between American soldiers and Italian locals; a relationship of uneasiness and tension that occasionally turns to a complicated camaraderie and understanding. Operating in a hybrid of documentary style and dramatic fiction with a cast of actors and non-professional, Paisan continues the neorealist vision of Rome, Open City on a grander scale, authentically portraying the recent history in all its devastation and tragedy, juxtaposed by moments of connection and hope for humanity.