Mixing fact and fiction, Rome, Open City is a story of life and death, depicting the struggles of four Roman partisans during the German occupation. Resistance leader Giorgio Manfredi (Marcello Pagliero) flees the Gestapo and seeks a place to hide with the help of his friend Francesco (Francesco Grandjacquet), his pregnant fiancée Pina (Anna Magnani) and the priest who is due to marry them, Don Pietro Pellegrini (Aldo Fabrizi).

Rossellini and collaborators (including a young Federico Fellini who served as a co-writer) created a choral story of a city dominated by fear, violence, moral degradation and the raw courage of its inhabitants.

Shot on the streets and in a makeshift studio only six months after the liberation of Rome, when Germany still occupied Northern Italy, the film features a largely non-professional cast, except for Aldo Fabrizi and Anna Magnani with her memorable performance. Varying between comical and violent scenes, reality appears in all its dynamism: it was the beginning of a new way of seeing.