Pompei: Below the Clouds

Face Addict tells the story of a unique and unrepeatable experience, that of the artistic community in New York between the late '70s and early '80s, known as the downtown scene.

The story of a hitman for the drug cartels in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

Capturing life on the Italian island of Lampedusa, a frontline in the European migrant crisis.

A chronicle of the first nine years of Pope Francis' pontificate, including trips to 53 countries, focusing on his most important issues - poverty, migration, environment, solidarity, and war - while also giving rare access to the public life of the pontifical.

Shot over three years on the borders between Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria and Lebanon, the film depicts the everyday struggles of people attempting to rebuild their lives amongst the devastating effects of civil wars, dictatorships, foreign invasions, and the deadly presence of ISIS.

In a series of small portraits, Gianfranco Rosi depicts life on and along the banks of the Ganges River. The director’s first film documents the boat trip he took along India’s sacred river with his helmsman, Gopal. They pass tourists and locals, witnessing them bathe, work, or meditate. The film captures the imagination of the endless circle of life and death, which is rooted in the lives of the Indian people, and is convincingly manifested in the way they bid farewell to the dead.

During a five year period an Italian filmmaker documents the world of down-on-their-luck individuals who live in a Californian desert trying to get by one day at a time. None of them has more than a vehicle, a dog and some clothes.

After the India of Varanasi’s boatmen, the American desert of the dropouts, and the Mexico of the killers of drugtrade, Gianfranco Rosi has decided to tell the tale of a part of his own country, roaming and filming for over two years in a minivan on Rome’s giant ring road—the Grande Raccordo Anulare, or GRA—to discover the invisible worlds and possible futures harbored in this area of constant turmoil. Elusive characters and fleeting apparitions emerge from the background of the winding zone: a nobleman from the Piemonte region and his college student daughter sharing a one-room efficiency in a modern apartment building along the GRA.

Renato Nicolini is travelling along the Grande Raccordo Anulare. The traffic flows behind him like thoughts that have been triggered in a logic of free association. His story consists of memories and connections that span esoteric suggestions, city-planning considerations, and metropolitan legends.

A man lives alone inside a closed labyrinth like space which seems to reflect his state of mind. The windows open into his subconscious to illuminate the desolate and mysterious spectacle of his solitude as if this were the last day of the world, and he the last man able to testify.

The Lion is the symbol of Venice, but also of courage: that of a city and - in our case - of a Film Festival and a media event that did not give up and stubbornly "wanted" to be realized in spite of the world around, of Codiv19 and the great uncertainty that dominates the global situation. In an 'abnormal' city, never seen before so deprived of tourists and the general chaos that - in general - characterizes it between the end of August and the beginning of September, our story begins, made up of a Venice never seen before and - therefore - little or nothing told cinematically. A crescendo of emotions, which between stage and behind the scenes, between what passes in front of the screen and what remains behind involves the viewer in depth.