Germany Year Zero is the final part of Rossellini's great neo-realist war trilogy, (which also includes Rome, Open City and Paisa). The long opening tracking shot through the devastated streets of Berlin under the Occupation in 1945 sets the almost hallucinatory tone, with the focus of the story being a 13-year-old boy's degradation under the social conditions of the defeated city. Rossellini knew that in war, everyone is a victim. Martin Scorsese once said about the film, 'I see this film as a prayer from Rossellini to the postwar world, a prayer for compassion.'