Below the Clouds
A masterful film about Naples and its predecessor Pompeii, one of the oldest cities in the world. In breathtaking black-and-white images, Gianfranco Rosi weaves everyday scenes together into a passionate portrait of the city, its residents, and the fragile beauty of everything on the verge of disappearing. Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.
Gianfranco Rosi is the only documentary filmmaker to have ever won both the Golden Lion at Venice (Sacro GRA, 2013) and the Golden Bear at Berlin (Fire at Sea, 2016). For Below the Clouds, he spent three years exploring both the aboveground and underground worlds between Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples. Despite the hustle and cheerfulness of their city, Neapolitans always live with the awareness that Vesuvius could erupt. Naples is a city where the living and the dead exist side by side, where underground forces undermine the surface, and where the past constantly affects the present.
Rosi visits the ruins of Pompeii and the illegal tunnels that tomb raiders dig underneath to sell ancient artifacts on the black market. He follows children getting tutoring from an old bookseller and staff at the emergency call center, who with a wink soothe callers’ fears every time the ground shakes again. The passion, warmth, and humor of his main subjects draw you into a film that gradually gets under your skin and lingers for a long time. The music is by Oscar-winner Daniel Blumberg (The Brutalist), who makes sound part of the landscape itself. The beautiful black-and-white cinematography is by Rosi himself. The film was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the 2025 Venice Film Festival.
