Film archive, 2025

Below the Clouds

Sotto le nuvole

Director Gianfranco ROSI

1Festival entries

★Avg. rating

Gianfranco Rosi′s new film, following his consecutive Golden Bear and Golden Lion wins at the Berlin and Venice film festivals, redirected the world’s documentary gaze toward Italy, specifically dealing with something in the Naples region. It′s described as ‘something’ because, like a landscape in the mist, its focus remains unclear. Below the Clouds operates by letting the space speak for itself. Beginning with a quote from Cocteau mentioning Mount Vesuvius, the vast fresco broadly and freely depicts ‘ruins and museums, archaeologists and tomb raiders, fire fighters and citizens, trams and grain transporters, students and laborers, tourists and sailors, clouds and the sea, earthquakes and wars.’ Although boundaries exist between them, like ‘past and present, life and death,’ these divisions are blurred, allowing all things to become interconnected. In this way, continuity is maintained, and humanity becomes a Sisyphus climbing the eternal mountain. It′s a landscape painting beyond a mere landscape, embracing color within its black and white imagery.