Family during wartime

His neorealist masterpieces like 'Bicycle Thieves' and 'Umberto D.' capture the intimate struggles of families surviving poverty and hardship in post-war Italy with profound humanistic depth.

Films like 'Ivan's Childhood' and 'Mirror' explore the psychological and spiritual devastation of war on families and childhood with meditative visual poetry.

His socially conscious films like 'Kes' and 'I, Daniel Blake' examine how families endure systemic hardship and conflict, often with wartime or post-conflict undertones of class struggle.