The first feature film to issue from a shell-shocked nation, The Murderers Are Among Us gained recognition for its expressionistic shadows, which evoked Weimar Germany’s "haunted screen," and for its documentary verisimilitude, which echoed neorealism’s exploration of postwar spaces. Set in Berlin, former capital of the German Reich but now reduced to mounds of rubble, the film focuses on the struggles of the city’s desperate and cynical survivors. In portraying a country shattered by bombs and shackled with guilt, Staudte delivers a powerful indictment of an unreconciled past.