EXCLUSIVE: Director Gianfranco Rosi’s award-winning documentary Pompei: Below the Clouds will be coming to U.S. theaters and to MUBI’s streaming platform in March.
The film, shot in lustrous black and white by Rosi, explores life in the city in southern Italy where Mount Vesuvius, an active volcano, looms nearby. MUBI will open the documentary at IFC Center and the Walter Reade Theater in New York City on March 6, followed a week later at Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles and the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago. It premieres on the MUBI streaming service on March 27.
Watch the trailer for the film above.
Pompei: Below the Clouds premiered (under the slightly abbreviated title Below the Clouds) at the Venice Film Festival last year, where it won two awards including a Special Jury Prize. It was also an official selection at the New York Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival, Stockholm Film Festival, Valladolid International Film Festival in Spain, IDFA in Amsterdam, São Paulo International Film Festival in Brazil, and many other major festivals around the world.
‘Pompei: Below the Clouds’
MUBI
“Between Mount Vesuvius and the Gulf of Naples, the ground shakes periodically and the fumaroles of the Phlegraean Fields taint the air,” notes a synopsis of the film. “From the traces of history, memories of the subterranean world, and the concerns of the present, in black and white, a lesser-known Naples emerges and fills with voices, with lives. Below the clouds lies a territory crisscrossed by locals, worshippers, tourists, and archaeologists excavating a past that in museums will give new life and meaning to statues, fragments, and ruins.”
The synopsis continues, “The train that rings Vesuvius makes its rounds as racehorses train along the shore. A teacher runs a makeshift afterschool for children and adolescents. Firemen in their command center calm the fears of the locals who call in, law enforcement tracks down tomb robbers, while in the port of Torre Annunziata, Syrian tankers unload Ukrainian grain. The land that skirts the gulf is a vast time machine.”
MUBI
Rosi earned an Oscar nomination for his 2016 film Fire at Sea (Fuocoammare), winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. His credits include Sacro GRA, winner of the Golden Lion at the 2013 Venice Film Festival; In Viaggio: The Travels of Pope Francis (2022), Notturno (2020), El Sicario, Room 164 (2010), and Boatman (1993). He shoots and records the sound for his films.
Director Gianfranco Rosi
Courtesy of Vittorio Zunino Celotto
At a Q&A in Los Angeles in December, Rosi spoke about his approach to filmmaking.
“Most of my films, I don’t write a script, I just write a few pages with an idea of what would be the film,” he explained. “Of course, I don’t write characters, storytelling, because I like to start this journey in a totally open way and let reality come to me constantly. And that’s how I start writing my film by living in a situation, by staying there [in the location]. My biggest investment is time.”
Rosi added, “Working as a one-person crew allows me to spend a lot of time in a place and become part of that and try to understand, encounter. The story of my films is the story of the encounter [with] people. First I have to encounter place, a location. Then within this location I have to encounter people and then have to build the relationship with the people I meet and then start getting involved in their own story.”
‘Pompei: Below the Clouds’
MUBI
Museum curators and emergency responders are among the people Rosi encounters in Pompei: Below the Clouds. The city rumbles occasionally, a reminder that Mount Vesuvius, though considered dormant, could flare to life at any moment. Rosi shares calls made to the fire department, including one from a woman who asks if there has been an earthquake, informing the operator that when the ground began to shake, “I was cooking a nice ragù.”
Pompei: Below the Clouds is produced by directed and produced by Rosi and produced by Paolo Del Brocco, and Donatella Palermo. Cinematography and sound are by Rosi. Fabrizio Federico edited the film. Daniel Blumberg composed the score.
Watch the trailer for Pompei: Below the Clouds above.
