Directed by Gianfranco Rosi, 2025, Italy, Not Rated, 115 minutes, subtitled

Filmed over three years, Pompei: Below the Clouds observes the everyday lives of the region's inhabitants: firefighters, archaeologists, sailors, port workers, street educators, refugees, and many others. The film has no narration and no traditional storyline. Instead, it relies on quiet observation: gestures, faces, ruins, landscapes, and fragments of daily life. Rosi blends the ancient and the modern, showing how people live their ordinary routines beneath the symbolic “cloud” of the volcano. Through this mosaic of scenes, the documentary explores the layers of time: the buried past of Pompeii and the living present of Naples coexist in a space suspended between memory and contemporary reality. The effect is meditative, sometimes somber, and deeply visual — a portrait of a region where history and daily life constantly overlap.

Munson Film Series is sponsored by M&T Bank and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.