Sunday, 27 September 2026 at 7 pm
Sotto le nuvole
Director: Gianfranco Rosi
Italy • 2025 • 115 min • documentary
Between Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples, the land trembles from time to time as the fumaroles of the Phlegraean (burning) fields pollute the air. The ruins lying beneath – Pompeii, Herculaneum, buried Roman villas – speak of a future buried by the passage of time. From these traces of history and memories of the underworld, a lesser-known Naples emerges in black-and-white images filled with a muted vitality. Gianfranco Rosi spent three years living and filming beneath the Vesuvian horizon, tracing the traces of the past, excavating time, the remnants of everyday lives. Observing the clouds and smoke that loom over the Phlegraean Fields. In doing so, he embraces the serendipity of encounters, places, and situations. His shots take shape as the stories come to life. Between the sea, sky, and volcano, a new archive of the true and the possible is revealed.
Naples is a city usually filmed in vivid Mediterranean colour and light. But Rosi chose to depict it in black and white. Cocteau once wrote that Vesuvius produces all the clouds in the world. These clouds led Rossi to the film's title and aesthetic. Beneath the Clouds shows how wars in the all of Rosi's films (for example, Fire at Sea) are set in a specific location but reflect the relentless currents of global politics.
Beneath the Clouds shows how the wars in Syria and Ukraine are carving unexpected traces into the texture of the city. Documenting places of transition and connection, however fragile, Rosi poses important questions and imagines a space where intersecting tracts become points of encounter and the very foundations of cinematic form. In doing so, he treats the margin as an area of contact and interaction, a potential passage.