In 1960s Italy, a group of scientists explore Europe’s deepest cave in the Calabrian hinterland – the almost 700m deep Bifurto Abyss. Their venture goes unnoticed by the inhabitants of a neighbouring village, but not by an old shepherd whose solitary life interweaves with the group’s journey. A decade after the award-winning Le Quattro Volte, Michelangelo Frammartino returns with another work of mystical beauty somewhere between drama and documentary. Winner of the Special Jury Prize at Venice 2021.

Reviews

‘Unhurried meditation on the beauties of geological time…It lives alone; the cinematic equivalent of a hermit on a mountaintop.’
★★★★
Xan Brooks, The Guardian

‘It’s a magnificent piece of work, completely beguiling from end to end and one which wears its immense philosophical profundity with admirable lightness.’
David Jenkins, Little White Lies