Central architect of Italian neorealist cinema who laid down the blueprint for the movement with writings ranging from screenplays and novels to theory and poetry.

After an uneventful screenwriting debut with "Daro un Milione" (1935), Zavattini, a committed Marxist, began to formulate his vision of a cinema of truth, free of artificiality and pretense, which would concern itself with the problems of everyday people. He collaborated with another key figure of the movement, Vittorio De Sica, as early as "Teresea Venerdi" (1941), but it was with "The Children are Watching Us" (1943), about a young