Germany, Year Zero

Germany, Year Zero (Germania anno zero, 1948) is Roberto Rossellini's neorealist drama you can watch online on iFILM, filmed on location in the rubble of Berlin just two years after the fighting stopped. It is the final chapter of his war trilogy.

Twelve-year-old Edmund Köhler picks his way through the wreckage of a city trying to feed his family. His father is sick and bedridden, his older brother hides to avoid arrest, his sister scrapes together what she can. The boy moves through a world of black-market deals and hollow adults — including a former teacher who fills his head with ideas borrowed from a defeated regime. That encounter sets Edmund on a path the film follows without flinching.

Rossellini shot without a studio, using the actual ruined streets of 1947 Berlin as his set. The film stands as a forensic look at what defeat does to ordinary people, and to children above all. Watch Germany, Year Zero (1948) online on iFILM.