The southern Italian city of Naples is built on history – a modern metropolis atop ancient ruins from Roman times. That sheer breadth of time lends a kind of stability to the place, and yet it’s also inherently unstable because of the nearby Mount Vesuvius stratovolcano and the Campi Flegrei supervolcano west of the city, which trigger constant seismic activity. Napoli is an earthquake zone.
Oscar-nominated filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi explores the past, present and future of the vibrant city in his film Pompei: Below the Clouds, which is now playing in New York and opens in Los Angeles this weekend. It premieres March 27 on the Mubi streaming service.
“Naples is a city forever marked by the looming presence of Mount Vesuvius,” notes a synopsis. “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.”
Rosi, who earned an Oscar nomination for his 2016 film Fire at Sea, joins the latest episode of Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast to discuss his new film, winner of two prizes at the Venice Film Festival, where the documentary premiered. The filmmaker tells us why he shot Pompei: Below the Clouds in black and white, how he learned to “see” in black and white, and why he thinks the clouds over Naples serve as a “Greek chorus” to the scenes he filmed in the city.
He also explains why a story about the sculptor Giacometti informs his approach to filmmaking, and shares humorous anecdotes about his time spent filming in an emergency call center in Naples, where locals reach out to first responders — sometimes with a real emergency, and sometimes not. (One man calls several times a day asking for the current time. Another woman calls up to inquire if an earthquake had just happened, informing the operator that when the ground began to shake, “I was cooking a nice ragù.”)
Doc Talk co-host John Ridley calls the documentary one of the most astonishing films he’s ever seen.
That’s on the new episode of Doc Talk hosted by Oscar winner Ridley (12 Years a Slave, Shirley) and Matt Carey, Deadline’s senior documentary editor. The pod is a production of Deadline and Ridley’s Nō Studios.
Listen to the episode above or on major podcast platforms including Spotify, iHeart and Apple.
English (US) ·