>> Catalog 2025

Below the Clouds

Sotto le nuvole

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ITALY / 2025 / Italian, Syrian-Arabic, Japanese, Neapolitan Dialect, English / B&W / DCP / 114 min

Director, Script, Photography, Sound: Gianfranco Rosi
Editing: Fabrizio Federico
Composer: Daniel Blumberg
Executive Producer: Donatella Palermo
Producers: Gianfranco Rosi, Donatella Palermo, Paolo Del Brocco
Production Companies: 21Uno Film, Stemal Entertainment, Rai Cinema
World Sales: The Match Factory

Naples, Italy, at the foot of Mount Vesuvius. Tunnels dug by tomb raiders stretch beneath the city, and the frescoes of ancient mansions are gone without a trace. At dawn, a level three tremor rouses people from their slumber. At the fire department, the phone lines carry the voices of citizens. Smoke rises from the crater of the volcano under low-hanging clouds. Young Syrians unload Ukrainian grain from a massive ship that has docked at the port. In a shopping district, a familiar old man named Titti watches over children’s studies. At the ruins of Pompeii, a team from the University of Tokyo excavates, and in the museum’s storage area, statues appear in the beam of a museum worker’s flashlight. The history and present of this volcanic city flicker in the darkness. (AK)

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[Director’s Statement] For three years I lived and filmed along the horizon of Mount Vesuvius, seeking traces of history, the excavation of time, the remains of everyday life. I captured the stories I heard in the voices of those who spoke, I studied the clouds and the smoke rising from the Phlegraean Fields. When I film, I embrace the elements of surprise in an encounter, in a place, the life of a situation. The challenge is to stay true to this sense of wonder while staying within the camera frame as the stories come to life. The time of the film is the time of these encounters. I filmed in black-and-white, and I saw in black-and-white. As I filmed, between the sea, the sky, and Vesuvius, I uncovered a new archive of the true and the possible.