Gianfranco Rosi presented his latest film, Sotto le Nuvole, with Vesuvio as the protagonist in Los Angeles. The work was shown to members of the Academy in view of the selection of documentaries that will compete at 98a Oscar night, scheduled on March 15, 2026. The shortlist will be announced on December 16th. For the Roman director it would be the second nomination, after the one for Fuocoammare, winner of the Golden Bear in Berlin in 2016, three years after the Golden Lion conquered with Sacro GRA.
After moving to the prestigious American Film Institute Festival, Rosi met with the public at the Italian Cultural Institute in Los Angeles, where he told the genesis of the project and his reflections on cinema and documentary language.
How is this new journey to the Oscar after Venice?
“Venice already seems to have passed an infinite time, especially because here we are trying to enter this crazy Oscar race for documentaries. We have already tried in the past with Fuocoammare, which went well, then with Notturno, arrived in shortlists, and now we see how this film will go. We started late: I’ve been here for a week and we have to recover a lot. »
What do you remember about the award received in Venice?
“It was an unexpected award. This year Venice was colossal, with beautiful films, of great authors. I was leaving for Toronto when they called me: I went back from the airport, picked up the prize and the next day I left. It was perfect: neither too much nor little. A just balance, finally without controversy. The other times we were always discussing: “How do you give a Golden Lion to those who do not direct actors?” This time no evil, and it was so beautiful. »
His cinema continues to escape every definition. How does this freedom live from labels?
“I can never adapt to “labels”, labels. Since the beginning of my career, my challenge has always been to use the language of cinema in reality. Everything I tell must become a cinematic form. If you do not use the language of cinema, the wonderful possibility that the documentary offers you in the experimentation also dies. Each story has a new approach, a different reading, and for me the cinema remains the only appiglio. »
Why did you choose Naples and Vesuvius as the heart of the film?
«The film opens with a wonderful phrase by Jean Cocteau: “The Vesuvius produces all the clouds of the world, so Naples is the world.” The idea that those clouds spread in the heavens of the world is a very powerful image. If Cocteau wrote it, it means that behind there is a universal metaphor. In this film I look for this: starting from Naples and making it the whole world. Everyone must read it according to their own culture, sensitivity and identity. If a thousand people see it, I would like a thousand different interpretations to arise. »
Un nuovo linguaggio sonoro
For the first time Rosi chose to rely on an original soundtrack, signed by Daniel Blumberg, winner of the Oscar in 2025 for Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist.
“I had never used music in my films – says Rosi – but this time I felt the need. In particular, in the final underwater scene, it needed something that went beyond environmental sound, a deep rhythm that made the film breathe.”
The two have known each other for twelve years, from a festival in Istanbul:
“Daniel was very young, but since then we are friends. I told him: ‘You will visit the Oscar, so immediately agree to work with me’. And so it was: he arrived in Rome with the statuette in the suitcase. ”
After weeks of work and experimental recordings between London and Naples, even underwater and between the rocks of the Neapolitan coast, Blumberg’s music gave the film, says Rosi, “that suspension and that breath I was looking for from the beginning”.
L’articolo “Under the Clouds” by Gianfranco Rosi towards Oscars proviene da IlNewyorkese.
