Roma, città aperta, was the first major film of the neo-realist movement, shot on left over film and locations so freshly evacuated that the German army’s presence is still hauntingly tangible. Rossellini’s gritty film stock and unpolished faces worked so powerfully that they became the neo-realist movements basic vocabulary, and his refusal to glamorise the protagonists makes their heroism shine all the more brightly.

But this is far more than a film pioneering a groundbreaking new technique. The medium typifies the ordinariness of the people and contrasts it with extraordinary choices they make in the face of their oppression. Love without counting the cost, loyalty that knows its price and faith and hope that refuses to be ground into the dirt.