Roberto Rossellini’s Paisan is a landmark of Italian Neorealism and a follow-up to his breakthrough film Rome, Open City. Together with Germany, Year Zero, it forms part of Rossellini’s celebrated war trilogy.

The film is composed of six episodes set during the Allied liberation of Italy, from Sicily in 1943 to the marshlands of the Po Delta in the winter of 1944–45. Paisan ’s episodic structure carries a profound political insight: no single story can contain the truth of a nation’s suffering and resistance. Italy emerges not as a monolith but as a patchwork of dialects, landscapes, and moral choices. The final episode, set among the partisans of the Po Delta, achieves a devastating austerity that anticipates decades of political cinema to come.

Paisan is an essential cornerstone – a film that insists on looking at history through the eyes of ordinary people, and that finds, in the chaos and rubble, both the fragility and the resilience of human dignity.

“PAISÀ’s realism consists in reflecting the unbridgeable gap between humanity and the real; its humanism in recognising and displaying the suffering this gap condemns humanity to.” – Allan James Thomas, SENSES OF CINEMA

Six episodes on the allies crossing Italy. In the first, a Sicilian girl befriends an American soldier. In the second, a Neapolitan rascal steals the shoes of a black American soldier who moves to pity for him. In the third, a Roman girl forced to prostitution encounters a US soldier she had met during Liberation Day. In the fourth an English nurse uselessly
wanders around Florence looking for a partisan she has fallen in love with. In the fifth episode three American chaplains of different confessions are welcomed to stay at a newly liberated Roman Catholic monastery. In the sixth and final episode partisans and US paratroops are the victims of the ferocity of German Nazis.

The screening is part of Malmö Antifascista's curated film program Cinema Resistenza.

April 25: The Anniversary of the Italian Liberation from Nazism and Fascism, known as Festa della Liberazione or simply 25 aprile, is a national holiday celebrated every 25 April to​ commemorate the end of Nazi occupation and the Fascist regime in Italy in 1945. This year we meet to celebrate its 81st anniversary. Join in!

25 April 2026, h. 17:00, Möllevångstorget, Malmö

We will sing songs (who doesn't know "Bella Ciao"?), read poems, and listen to talks on why it is important to continue resisting every form of fascism.

ABOUT MALMÖ ANTIFASCISTA
Malmö Antifascista is an Italian-speaking collective of antifascists active in the area of Malmö since October 2023. They arrange different types of study activities on fascism, antifascism and resistance, with an internationalist perspective and a special attention towards the Italian and the Swedish political context. Join Malmö Antifascista's Facebook group or mailing list to receive updates on their activities