Open Roads ’26: Roberto Rossellini Living Without a Script

Most people know Roberto Rossellini from his classic Italian Neo-Realist films and his scandalous love affairs. This documentary is about neither. Okay, maybe there is a little of the latter. Nevertheless, he had already severed his relationship with Anna Magnani and Ingrid Bergman has one foot out the door when directors Ilaria de Laurentiis, Rafaele Brunetti, and Andrea Paolo Massara pick-up the story of his life in the documentary Roberto Rossellini: Living Without a Script, which screens tomorrow as part of Open Roads: New Italian Cinema 2026.

Throughout the film, Rossellini sounds much like Miles Davis, repeatedly telling admirers that of they like his 1950s Neo-Realist classics, they should just re-watch those old films—but they no longer interested him. Instead, he developed a fascination with India, which he hoped to document in a non-fiction film. The filmmakers and commentators clearly imply Bergman dismissed such ambitions as a pipe dream (especially given their increasingly dire financial straits), until Nehru greased the wheels for the production of what became India: Matri Bhumi.

It was a slow production, because Rossellini spent so much time wooing his future wife Sonali Senroy DasGupta, his ostensive co-screenwriter. Yes, he was still technically married at the time they met, but to be fair, so was DasGupta. See, there’s still plenty of good stuff left to cover in Living Without a Script. In fact, it almost functions as a sequel to Francesco Patierno’s The War of the Volcanoes, which reveled in the gossip surrounding the start of his relationship with Bergman.

Yet, despite the considerable time devoted to Rossellini’s romance with DasGupta, the discussion of the filmmaker’s nonfiction television output will be new to a lot of viewers. Most of it remains hard to find outside Italy, perhaps with good reason, because a good deal of what we see in Living Without a Script looks rather dated.

To answer your final naggingly obvious question—yes, Isabella Rossellini discusses her father at great length. In fact, Rossellini was an active supporter of the production, supplying considerable material from the family archive.

If viewers are interested the auteur’s late-career period, then they should enjoy the stylistically straightforward but informative Living Without a Script (whereas, the converse is also most likely true). Skillfully assembled, it thoroughly covers his post-Bergman films, but keep in mind, it only mentions classics like Paisan and Rome, Open City in passing. It is the documentary Rossellini himself would probably have preferred, but maybe not his admirers. Recommended for cineastes fully aware of its focus, Roberto Rossellini: Living Without a Script screens tomorrow (6/1) in New York, as part of this year’s Open Roads.