Gianfranco Rosi’s Naples-Set ‘Below the Clouds’ Boarded by Match Factory as First-Look Image Revealed (EXCLUSIVE)

The Match Factory has boarded “Below the Clouds,” the hotly anticipated new documentary directed by Gianfranco Rosi whose “Fire at Sea” won the 2016 Berlin Golden Bear while his “Sacro GRA” scooped the 2013 Venice Golden Lion.

“Below the Clouds” (see first-look image above) sees Rosi return to his native city of Naples and its suburbs, “a region whose inhabitants for almost three millennia have, sometimes uneasily, co-existed with the nearby volcano of Mount Vesuvius and where many of the challenges of the modern age are informed by a complicated past,” as promotional materials put it.

The film, which is produced by Rosi’s company 21Uno Film in collaboration with Donatella Palermo’s Stemal Entertainment, is now in post following a two-year shoot and is expected to soon surface on the festival circuit.

“The land around Vesuvius is a vast palimpsest. On the surface, underground and even beneath the sea of the modern city of Naples and its surroundings, the memory of history is etched into tunnels, walls and fissures, the remains of women, children and men — statues, buried cities,” says the provided synopsis.

“Only thin layers separate contemporary and ancient life, and the past puts its stamp on the present: on archaeologists, scholars and tomb raiders, on firemen and schoolchildren, tourists and sailors, the devout and the indifferent,” it notes.

Rosi’s most recent work is “Notturno,” which in 2021 was selected for the Venice Film Festival competition and received nominations for best documentary at Camerimage and the David di Donatello Awards.

Rosi shot “Notturno” over three years along the rattled borders of Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria and Lebanon in his signature observational — and also empathetic — style. The impressionistic doc captures people who have long been contending with the ravages of war and terror, most recently inflicted by ISIS.

In 2024, Rosi was honored by Camerimage with the award for outstanding achievements in documentary filmmaking.

The Match Factory will be launching sales on “Below the Clouds” in Cannes, where their slate includes Oliver Laxe’s “Sirat” and Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind,” both in competition, and Akinola Davies Jr.’s “My Father’s Shadow” in Un Certain Regard.