Pompei: Below the Clouds
MUBI | Release Date: March 6, 2026 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
87
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 15 Critic Reviews
Positive:
14
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyMar 6, 2026
Vesuvius might erupt again. The angel of history keeps moving forward. Time destroys, preserves, and then returns (one hopes, at least). Rosi’s film is a meditative and moving document showing that process and possibility. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterJordan MintzerSep 7, 2025
Time stands still and leaps across the epochs in Below the Clouds, which reveals how much our world has been transformed over the millennia, while also remaining the same. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawSep 6, 2025
It is an intensely disquieting, utterly distinctive film and a superb final panel to his triptych. Read full review
90
The Irish TimesTara BradyMar 26, 2026
Taking its cues from those ancient remains, Rosi’s deserving Special Prize winner at Venice gifts us a pristine, durable snapshot of Naples. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriMar 9, 2026
Shot in black and white and filled with images of collapse, Below the Clouds is nevertheless a strangely hopeful work. Read full review
90
The New YorkerJustin ChangMar 3, 2026
In Pompei: Below the Clouds, Rosi is as quietly watchful as ever, though he is either remarkably skilled or remarkably fortunate in finding individuals whose voices of conscience, matched by action, can stand in for his own. Read full review
90
VarietyGuy LodgeSep 7, 2025
While among his warmest works, rich in pleasures of place and weather and human motion, it’s no empty travelogue, notwithstanding the sometimes glistening beauty of Rosi’s black-and-white cinematography. Read full review
90
Screen DailyLee MarshallSep 7, 2025
To the outsider, Naples is often seen as a city of colour and life, a place of bubbling exuberance. Not so in Giancarlo Rosi’s strikingly melancholic documentary portrait of the southern Italian metropolis. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleMar 13, 2026
The notion of Naples as a place in perpetual contact with its ghostly, grand history, whether you’re a citizen living on top of it or a visitor passing through, is what gives Gianfranco Rosi’s patient, eccentric documentary Pompei: Below the Clouds its strangely beautiful atmosphere of reflection and restlessness. Read full review
80
TheWrapSteve PondSep 7, 2025
Below the Clouds is a tone poem paying tribute to a region that is suffused with beauty and haunted by loss. It wanders, to be sure, but in a way that’s the point. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesMar 11, 2026
It’s all rather stunning to behold, especially in black & white, but Below the Clouds eloquently articulates the maxim that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” That eye sees something very different from a safe remove. By and large, the people featured in Rosi’s documentary are in the path of danger. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineMarshall ShafferSep 9, 2025
Gianfranco Rosi’s long, languorous, often hushed snapshots of the area between Vesuvius and the Gulf of Naples conjure a sense of life here being suspended in time. Read full review
70
Little White LiesDavid JenkinsMar 29, 2026
The film is ambling, gentle and doesn’t strain too hard to force a point, but allows you to appreciate the multifarious nature of life in a city where the spectre of destruction lurks ominously in the clouds. Read full review
70
IONCINEMA.comNicholas BellMar 5, 2026
Rosi approaches obscured angles of Naples, going above and below, inside and out. Read full review
50
Next Best PictureCody DericksSep 7, 2025
With Below the Clouds, Rosi performs an act of preemptive time travel by putting images and voices of a specific time, place, and people onto film. It’s a taxing watch that intentionally tries modern viewers’ patience, which is sure to repel most, but the nobility of Rosi’s intentions is inarguable. Read full review
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