“Time destroys everything, preserves everything, and then returns to us in an unexpected way.” Mubi has revealed the full official US trailer for Pompei: Below the Clouds, the latest compelling observational documentary film made by award-winning Italian filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi. This first premiered at the 2025 Venice Film Festival last year, under the name Sotto le nuvole (just Below the Clouds), with stops at the Toronto, Busan, London, New York, Vienna, Stockholm, and Chicago Film Festivals as well. A cinematic B&W portrait of life in the city of Naples, Italy in the south. Naples is a city forever marked by the looming presence of Mount Vesuvius (which destroyed Pompeii back in 79 AD). Beneath the quiet threat of eruption, people go about their days: archaeologists unearth the past, children learn as the earth hums, firefighters wait for the next call. “Below the clouds lies a territory criss-crossed by inhabitants, worshippers, tourists and archaeologists excavating the past — and by those who, in museums, strive to give new life and meaning to statues, fragments and ruins.” Ready to watch in US theaters this March if anyone wants to give it a look.
“For three years, I lived and filmed at the horizons of Vesuvius, seeking traces of history, the excavation of time, the remains of everyday life. I captured the stories in the voices of those who spoke; I watched the clouds and the smoke rising from the Phlegraean Fields. When I film, I embrace the surprise in an encounter, in a place, the life of a situation. The challenge is to follow the frame as the stories come to life. The time of the film is the trust of that encounter. I filmed in black and white, and I saw in black and white. As I filmed — between the sea, the sky, and Vesuvius — I uncovered a new archive of the true and the possible.” -Director Gianfranco Rosi
