with award-winning filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi in attendance for a Q&A following the screening
Sag Harbor, NY – Sag Harbor Cinema announces a special screening of Gianfranco Rosi’s 2025 documentary Below the Clouds in collaboration with Hamptons Doc Fest. The film had its world premiere in September at Venice Film Festival, where it received the Special Jury Prize. Filmmaker Rosi — well known for his award-winning documentaries such as Sacro GRA (Golden Lion, Venice Film Festival, 2013) and Academy Award-nominated Fire at Sea (Golden Bear, Berlinale, 2016) — will join SHC’s Founding Artistic Director Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan for an in-person Q&A following the screening on December 7th at 4:30pm.
Below the Clouds, Rosi’s eighth documentary, was shot in and around Naples over three years. The film captures the remote, mountainous landscapes and the daily lives and routines of residents who live between Mount Vesuvius and the Gulf of Naples, where the ground shakes periodically and the air smells of volcanic fumaroles. Shot in striking black-and-white, it explores the enduring connection between people and their environment and is accompanied by a score from composer Daniel Blumberg, who most recently won an Academy Award (Original Score) for The Brutalist.
“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,” says Rosi. “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.”
“Back in Italy, after three years of filming in the Middle East region for his formidable Notturno (2020), Rosi brings to Naples the inquisitive eye, poetic abstraction, and visual beauty that set his work so vividly apart in the realm of documentary,” says SHC’s Founding Artistic Director Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan. “Both whimsical and profound, Below the Clouds is a journey into a city and among its people where past, present, and (the frailty of) the future become one. His most ‘elemental’ work so far — earth, water, ‘il Vesuvio,’ ancient stones, and, of course, the clouds become characters themselves. Gianfranco Rosi has supported our Cinema by appearing from afar, during the pandemic. I am thrilled to finally have him in Sag Harbor, even more with this film.”
Sag Harbor Cinema will screen Below the Clouds on Sunday, December 7th at 4:30pm as part of its annual collaboration with Hamptons Doc Fest. Previous joint screenings include Mistress Dispeller (Elizabeth Lo) in 2024, Anselm (Wim Wenders) in 2023, and Citizenfour (Laura Poitras) in 2022. Tickets are available through hamptonsdocfest.com.
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ABOUT THE FILM
BELOW THE CLOUDS (SOTTO LE NUVOLE)
Directed by Gianfranco Rosi
Italy | 2025 | 115 mins | English and Italian, Syrian-Arabic, Japanese with English subtitles
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.
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ABOUT THE FILMMAKER
Gianfranco Rosi (Director, Writer, Cinematographer)
Born in Asmara (Eritrea) and raised between Italy and Istanbul, Gianfranco Rosi graduated from the New York University Film School in 1985. Following a journey to India in 1993, he produced and directed Boatman, a 55 minute portrait of a boatman on the banks of the Ganges, which screened at various international festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival, the Locarno Film Festival, and the Toronto International Film Festival.
His first feature, Below Sea Level (2008) — set in Slab City, California, about a community of homeless people living on a desert plain 40 meters below sea level — won Best Film in the Horizons section of the Venice International Film Festival and at Doc/It. It also took the Grand Prix, the Prix des Jeunes au Cinéma du Réel and was nominated for Best Documentary at the European Film Awards 2009.
Adapted from a story by journalist Charles Bowden, Rosi’s next work, El Sicario – Room 164 (2010), is the portrait of a hitman on the run from Mexican drug cartels in the form of an interview. The film won the FIPRESCI Award at the Venice Film Festival, where Rosi made history in 2013 by winning the Golden Lion with Sacro GRA — the story of hitherto unseen humanity that lives around the Grande Raccordo Anulare (the ring road highway) that circles Rome. It was the first time a documentary was awarded Venice’s most prestigious prize.
In 2016, Rosi won the Golden Bear for Best Film at the Berlin International Film Festival with Fuocoammare, a film about the 2015 migrant crisis from North Africa as seen through the eyes of the inhabitants of the island of Lampedusa.
Presented at the Venice Film Festival in 2020, his feature-length documentary Notturno was shortlisted for the 2021 Academy Awards for “Best International Feature Film.” A stark fresco of enduring humanity in a region historically ravaged by wars, Notturno was shot over three years along the borders of Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria, and Lebanon.
Garnering special access to the archives of the Vatican with In Viaggio (2022), Rosi retraced the journeys taken by Pope Francis over ten years of pontificate. Magnolia Pictures released the film in the US.
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About Sag Harbor Cinema
As a not-for-profit 501(c)3, community-based organization, Sag Harbor Cinema is dedicated to presenting the past, present and future of the Movies and to preserving and educating about films, filmmaking, and the film-going experience in its three state-of-the-art theaters. The Cinema engages its audiences and the community year-round through dialogue, discovery, and appreciation of the moving image – from blockbusters to student shorts and everything in between. Revitalized and reimagined through unprecedented community efforts to rebuild the iconic Main Street structure after a fire nearly destroyed it in 2016, SHC continues a long historic tradition of entertainment in the heart of Sag Harbor Village.