295 Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies Volume 6 Number 3 © 2018 Intellect Ltd Editorial. English language. doi: 10.1386/jicms.6.3.295_2 EDITORIAL LOUIS BAYMAN University of Southampton STEPHEN GUNDLE University of Warwick KARL SCHOONOVER University of Warwick Rome, Open City: Rupture and return The release of Roberto Rossellini’s Roma città aperta (Rome, Open City) in September 1945, just months after the Liberation of Italy, is a landmark in both cinema and Italian history. The film’s tale of popular resistance in Nazi- occupied Rome brought Italy to international audiences. It announced a new aesthetics of cinema – Neorealism – whose impact would be global. The film is a central reference point for cinematic realism and aesthetic radicalism, attracting attention and often controversy for its bold assertion of the neces- sary relationship between art and politics and influencing movements from the French New Wave to Brazilian Cinema Novo, British social realism, Iranian cinema and Dogme 95. It remains a key influence for contemporary filmmak- ers, while its story of commitment and betrayal in an occupied city remains lasting and sadly current in today’s epoch of occupations, insurgencies and the use of public urban spaces as theatres for violent spectacles of political power. The film’s remarkable attention to the specifics of these tactics of subjugation and its resistance has insured its import not only for the study of war, torture and fascism but also in understanding fields as diverse as cultural geography, gender and sexuality, historiography and philosophy.