Below the Clouds
Gianfranco Rosi / Italy / 2025 / 115 min
In the shadow of Vesuvius, Italian maestro Gianfranco Rosi follows the everyday lives of the Neapolitans. The final film in the award-winning Italy trilogy, told in sublime black-and-white images.
Naples is one of the world’s oldest cities, but its inhabitants know that they are living on borrowed time. The dormant volcano could bury the city in ash in an instant. Vesuvius’ eruption destroyed the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 AD, and the volcano is still active today. The inhabitants live in the shadow of Vesuvius, and the earth trembles beneath them.
Gianfranco Rosi follows everyone from Japanese archaeologists to the tourist crowds among the ruins of Pompeii, to the local Carabinieri investigating grave robbers and antique thieves in the illegal tunnels under the city. We are there when the hard-pressed employees at the emergency call center take calls from all over the city. Some just ask what time it is, others are anxious and want to know if what they are feeling is an earthquake.
Rosi is the only documentary filmmaker to have both the Berlinale’s Golden Bear and Venice’s Golden Lion on his mantelpiece. ‘Below the Clouds’ rounds off his Italy trilogy – from Rome to Lampedusa and now Naples. With his usual poetic but observant eye, he depicts a Naples where modernity and history coexist in razor-sharp and incredibly beautiful black-and-white images.