Below the Clouds Sotto le nuvole

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.