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Shown in black and white, a massive mountain sits in the middle of a sprawling city. Sun streams through the clouds.

Below the Clouds Sotto le nuvole

Directed by Gianfranco Rosi

Countries Italy Run Time 114 minutes

Synopsis

From the Oscar-nominated director of Fire at Sea comes an immersive and impressionistic portrait of humanity at the precipice. With Below the Clouds, celebrated filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi trains his camera on communities living in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, the volcano famous for burying the city of Pompeii nearly two centuries ago. Today, the area lies at a unique juncture between historic calamity and contemporary anxieties. As museum workers labor to preserve Pompeii’s extraordinary ruins and precious artifacts, the film also ventures into tunnels and classrooms, encounters firemen and teachers, and observes Japanese archeologists in the field and Syrian sailors shipping grain from Ukraine.

Filmed in luminous black and white and replete with haunting images from smoky skies to murky depths, Below the Clouds uniquely connects the sublime with the everyday. One of its most memorable refrains is its return to an emergency call center tasked with assisting harried citizens with problems both minor and harrowing. When the region is hit with a significant earthquake, the heavy legacy of history weighs on the panicked callers seeking help. Eruptions and disruptions, it seems, continue to come in many forms.

Language Italian, Arabic, Japanese, English with subtitles

Screenings & Events

There are currently no upcoming screenings of this film.

Film Credits

Producers Donatella Palermo, Gianfranco Rosi, Paolo Del Brocco
Screenwriter Gianfranco Rosi with the collaboration of Carmelo Marabello, Marie-Pierre Müller
Editor Fabrizio Federico
Cinematographer Gianfranco Rosi
Music Daniel Blumberg
Production Company 21Uno Film, Stemal Entertainment, with Rai Cinema

Sponsors

Program Partner

Program Patron

Cynthia Stone Raskin

With support from

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OutLook

Bouchra

Directed by Orian Barki, Meriem Bennani

Countries Italy, Morocco, U.S. Run Time 83 minutes

Synopsis

Bouchra, a coyote, is a queer Moroccan filmmaker based in New York City, navigating love and work in a world populated by other animal friends and family, including her hot ex-girlfriend, a cow, her best friend, a lizard, and her mom, Aicha, a coyote who lives back home in Casablanca. While Bouchra is finding her way in Manhattan, she has never resolved her mother’s lack of acceptance of her sexuality. It’s not that Bouchra has never come out; it’s that despite their closeness, her mom simply refuses to talk about it.

Brought to life in 3D animation, filmmaking team Orian Barki and Meriem Bennani, known for their 2020 lockdown art sensation 2 Lizards, have crafted a unique animated docu-fiction hybrid that is profoundly intimate, light-hearted, and touching, with a quirky surrealist edge. So what if they’re cool animals? Bouchra is a universal story of immigrant life, family conflict, and queer identity.

Genres Animation Family Affairs Film on Film LGBTQ

Language Arabic, French, English with subtitles

Screenings & Events

There are currently no upcoming screenings of this film.