The third installment of Rossellini's war trilogy (following Open City and Paisan) was, according to the director, "an attempt to discover the real reasons which had driven the Germans to act as they had done." Using nonprofessional actors and a neorealist style, the film focuses on its young protagonist, Edmund, and the devastated city in which he lives. Rossellini conceived the film around the final scenes of Edmund wandering in the ruins of Berlin. This long final sequence marks the end of a narrative trajectory that begins in the mode of documentary reportage but becomes ever more hallucinatory, charting a journey through a strange and devastated landscape.