BELOW THE CLOUDS
Directed by Gianfranco Rosi (FIRE AT SEA)
Original Score by Daniel Blumberg (THE BRUTALIST)
North American Premiere – Luminaries
2025 Toronto International Film Festival
Official TIFF Screening Schedule:
Saturday, September 6 at 9:15AM – Scotiabank 11 – Press & Industry
Monday, September 8 at 3:45PM – Lightbox 4 – North American Premiere
Tuesday, September 9 at 3:35PM – Scotiabank 7 – Public #2
Sunday, September 14 at 8:55AM – Scotiabank 8 – Public #
“STUNNING. Gianfranco Rosi makes documentaries like no one else, which may explain why he’s received top awards at major festivals that are usually reserved for works of fiction.”
– Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter
“There are many ways to live around an active volcano, and this humming, keen-eyed film is interested in all of them… While among his warmest works, rich in pleasures of place and weather and human motion, it’s no empty travelogue… Vesuvius may be biding its time, but it gets a voice of sorts in Rosi’s intricate exploration.”
– Guy Lodge, Variety
“Below the Clouds’ is a tone poem paying tribute to a region that is suffused with beauty and haunted by loss.”
– Steve Pond, The Wrap
Between Mount Vesuvius and the Gulf of Naples, the ground shakes periodically and the fumaroles of the Phlegraean Fields taint the air. 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 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.
Directed by Gianfranco Rosi
Produced by Donatella Palermo, Gianfranco Rosi, Paolo Del Brocco
Original Score by Daniel Blumberg (THE BRUTALIST)
Sales: The Match Factory
2025 / Italy / 115 min