Pompeii: Below the Clouds

Gianfranco Rosi won the Golden Bear with Fire at Sea and the Golden Lion with Sacro GRA; Sotto le nuvole took the Special Jury Prize at Venice in 2025 and continues the method that produced both — years spent in one place, no interviews arranged in advance, no commentary.

The place here is the Bay of Naples, filmed in black and white over three years. Rosi moves between the excavation sites at Pompeii and Herculaneum, the Carabinieri unit that recovers stolen antiquities, the tunnels under the modern city, a school, a museum after closing, and the households that live with Vesuvius as a neighbour rather than a monument. The connective idea is straightforward and inexhaustible: a population living on top of its own buried past, mostly not thinking about it.

At 114 minutes it is slower than Fire at Sea and less obviously urgent, and reviewers at Venice divided on whether the accumulation adds up. What is not in doubt is the photography — Rosi shoots his own films — and the sound work, which does more narrative labour than most documentaries attempt.