Below the Clouds, by Gianfranco Rosi
Grade: A- (**** out oif *****) (*AMOUR*)
AMOUR: Our Digital Club for Abandoned, Misunderstood, Overlooked, Underestimated, Revisted Film)
How do you live a “normal and ordinay” life around an active volcano?
Vet Italian filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi spent three years shooting in and around Naples Mount Vesuvius to create this layered portrait of modern living amid remnants of ancient history–and endless threats of major catastrophies.
An homage to the city of Naples, Below the Clouds (Italian: Sotto le nuvole) is Rosi’s third non-fiction feature about everyday life in Italy, after 2013’s Sacro GRA (about the outskirts of Rome) and 2016’s Fire at Sea (about Lampedusa).
The film world premieres in the main competition of the 2025 Venice Film Fest, where it won the Special Jury Prize.
A sharply vivid portrait of the city of Naples, the film presents fragments of the daily lives of the people who live and work in the city.
Near Vesuvius, fumaroles release volcanic gas and steam, but there’s man-made smoke, too, taken care of by members of Naples’ fire department. They’re among the prominently featured municipal bodies surveyed in the film.
It is Rosi’s first black-and-white documentary feature in over thirty years, after Boatman (which I had reviewed for Variety out of the 1993 Sundance Film Fest) about the Ganges river in India
Oscar winner Daniel Blumberg provided the ominous musical score, marking his first collaboration with Rosi.
Born in 1963, Gianfranco Rosi is best known for his documentaries, including 2013’s Sacro GRA, for which he won the Golden Lion, and 2016’s Fire at Sea, for which he won the Golden Bear and was nominated for the Best Documentary Oscrar.
Rosi is the only documentary filmmaker to win two highest awards at the three major European film festivals (Venice, Berlin, Cannes), and is the one of the few director to do it, alongside Michael Haneke, Ang Lee, and Jafar Panahi.
