'Open City'

"Open city" refers to a designation given a city when under siege or attack and all defenses have been let down.

During World War II, a number major European cities were deemed "open" including Brussels, Paris, Athens and, eventually, Rome once the Allies began bombing up until Allied occupation in June 1944.

In the film, Frederico Fellini, Roberto Rossellini and Sergio Amidei tell the story of the Italian Underground battling the occupying Nazi army through a series of terroristic attacks and espionage.

Filming started shortly after Rome was actually liberated and Rossellini was forced to used scrap film in order to make it. The German occupation was so fresh and raw that actual Nazi POWs were used as extras.

What a remarkable feat. To not only capture this portrait in recent history, but to capture it at ground zero with the perpetrators and people that lived the horror and fear. It's as close to a documentary as a scripted drama will ever get. It'd be like filming Platoon in the jungles of Vietnam in 1968.

Considering the circumstances in which it was filmed, Open City is very fresh and stark. The actors and actresses are really good and it paints a highly sympathetic portrait of bravery and resilience for the people of Italy that weren't into that Facsist thing.