With Mount Vesuvius looming over southwestern Italy’s idyllic region of Naples, both in history and imagery, one might reasonably think Gianfranco Rosi’s Below the Clouds is about the storied volcano, active and enormous. Yet the title announces Rosi’s focus clearly: Below. In the shadow of Vesuvius––an ominous, peripheral character in the film’s mosaic of curios and quiet charismatics––the vast, densely populated terrain the ancient volcano lords over is teeming with distinct and peculiar modern life. Through a welcome litany of characters and occupations, Rosi shows us around Naples with an invasive interest, like a father bestowing a passion to his child.
From carabinieri helicopters to tomb-robbing tunnels to racehorse-training beaches––and always back to the local train he starts and ends on––Rosi observes life from the volcano to the gulf with tactical focus. His direction, in concert with the silently slicing edit, is supremely delicate, the work of a craftsperson as precise in his post as his most demanding subjects: Japanese archaeologists meticulously dusting through ancient ruins or Greco-Roman statue keepers in the cold, lightless still of archival caves.
Rosi focuses on dutiful civic workers, laborers, crew, and craftspeople, like tunnel-investigating detectives, firefighters, and wizened afterschool teachers, all artisans in their respective field. For example: in a hypnotic ritual of draining and cleaning, Syrians aboard a giant cargo vessel in the port of Torre Annunziata dispense Ukrainian grain from their mini-skyscraper tank while darker-skinned workers inside the hopper perpetually manage the residuals in a sea of fluttering white grain that, in residue, looks like coke loosely caked on the walls, begging to be bumped with a broom so it can disappear into the abyssal central tube with the rest of the grain.
The Italian documentarian occasionally takes us up to the volcano, so close that we can taste the heat in ashen plumes of white-hot smoke so thick they could be cut into. The intimidating reality of the scene––haunted by the history of Pompeii and Herculaneum’s first-century devastation, which is inextricable from the city’s identity and culture––helps outsiders intuit the paranoia of the Neopolitan people, who we hear in panic on the other side of emergency lines after minor earthquakes. With a reactivated Vesuvius, every quake seems like it could be the beginning of the end of the region… again.
Speaking with a comfort and ease that could calm a crying baby, emergency dispatchers reassure anxious locals in quick calls that, in the comfort of our distance from the active volcano, comes across with a pleasant humor, a lovability that runs through the fascinating hodgepodge of endearing locals, visitors, and transplants, both temporary and permanent.
Rosi was one of those transplants living in Naples for years over the course of the shoot, immersing himself in his film in order to make it. His familiarity and comfort with Naples accordingly runs through the bones of Clouds, from the intimate access gained to his exclusive subjects to the way he shoots and directs our journey through the metropolitan area which, under most other directors, would feel aimless without a central subject(s). But Rosi never lets it stagnate.
A domestic-abuse call plays out in its heartbreaking entirety. An old movie house slowly evolves from recurring B-roll to a setting with a story, with meaning. Gobsmacking sequences underwater swallow and transfix our attention. On the flip side, herculean titanium beasts hurtle through the silver skies like industrial sentries with the camera aboard, lending a dynamic view from the heavens without detaching the camera from its tripod. Even when we’re staring at still water, there’s a reason––something remarkable inside the frame.
Captured in sterling black-and-white that brings Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky’s heightened contrast to mind, Rosi’s cinematography––a trademark for the director, who’s shot his own features since 2008––marks a departure for the filmmaker in its style and abandonment of color. The choice proves brilliant for how it accentuates the rich gradients, textures, and legends of Naples’ near-mythical world. Using only a tripod and three lenses, Rosi’s fixed camera, cinema verité approach is conceptually broken by the occasional recognition of the camera as a receptacle of information for the speaker. But the subjects could just as easily be talking to someone offscreen, which renders the camera no more invasive than if they were.
Coming off his first Oscar nomination and win for his work on The Brutalist, Daniel Blumberg delivers a score so tastefully subtle and well-woven into the film that you don’t realize it’s creating the mood until you’re already in it. Guided by Rosi’s meditation and contemplative control, this is among the year’s best documentaries.
Below the Clouds screened at the 63rd New York Film Festival and opens in early 2026, followed by a 2025 awards-qualifying run.