Originally released in 1948, Bicycle Thieves remains the best-loved work of the Italian neo-realist movement. Frustrated by post-war economic conditions and the Italian film industry’s continuing trend of producing mostly bourgeois comedies, a bold group of filmmakers set out produce films that they felt reflected the struggles of the everyday Italian. Shot on location, using amateur actors whenever possible, the neo-realist school was a wake-up call to world cinema, its innovative techniques soon felt everywhere, including Hollywood.

Bicycle Thieves tells us the compelling story of everyman Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani), whose life is thrown into chaos by the theft of his bicycle. Without it, he is unable to keep his job, so he and his son Bruno (Enzo Staiola, in one of the greatest child performances in cinema history) embark on a quest through the streets of Rome to find the bicycle - and its thief. A combination of stark realism, poetic visuals, and raw emotional force, Bicycle Thieves immediately entered the pantheon of the greatest films ever made. As the American playwright Arthur Miller memorably put it, "(Bicycle Thieves) is Everyman's search for dignity -- it is as though the soul of a man had been filmed."