Cinema Releases - Il Buco
During the economic boom of the 1960s, Europe’s highest building is being built in Italy’s prosperous North. At the other end of the country, young speleologists explore Europe’s deepest cave in the untouched Calabrian hinterland. The bottom of the Bifurto Abyss, 700 meters below Earth, is reached for the first time. The intruders’ venture goes unnoticed by the inhabitants of a small neighbouring village, but not by the old shepherd of the Pollino plateau whose solitary life begins to interweave with the group’s journey. IL BUCO chronicles a visit through unknown depths of life and nature and parallels two great voyages to the interior.
93 min/Italy/France/Germany/Italian with English subtitles/2021/Cert. U
World Premiere and Winner of the Special Jury Prize – Venice International Film Festival
| ICA Cinema | The Mall | London SW1Y 5AH | 020 7930 3647 | 23/26-28 Oct |
Week starting 10th June
| ICA Cinema (inc Q&A 9th Jun) | The Mall | London SW1Y 5AH | 020 7930 3647 | all week |
| Dochouse at Curzon Bloomsbury | Brunswick Centre | London WC1N 1AW | 0871 964 2838 | all week |
| Arthouse Crouch End | 159a Tottenham Lane | London N8 9BT | 020 8245 3099 | all week |
| Cine Lumiere | 17 Queensbury Place | London SW7 2DT | 020 7871 3535 | all week |
| Finsbury Park Picturehouse | 17 City North Place | London N4 3FU | 0871 902 5747 | all week |
| Fulham Rd Picturehouse | 142 Fulham Rd | London SW10 9QR | 0871 902 5747 | all week |
| Hackney Picturehouse | 270 Mare St | London E8 1HE | 0871 902 5747 | all week |
| HOME | 2 Tony Wilson Place | Manchester M15 4FN | 0161 200 1500 | all week |
| Tyneside | 10 Pilgrim Street | Newcastle NE1 6QG | 0191 227 5500 | all week |
| Showroom Cinema | Paternoster Square | Sheffield S1 2BX | 0114 2757727 | all week |
| Watershed | 1 Canon's Road | Bristol BS1 5TX | 0117 927 5100 | all week |
| Chapter | Market Rd | Cardiff CF5 1QE | 029 3031 1050 | all week |
| Filmhouse | 88 Lothian Rd | Edinburgh EH3 9BZ | 0131 228 2688 | all week |
| GFT | 12 Rose St | Glasgow G3 6RB | 0141 332 6535 | all week |
Week starting 17th June
| Phoenix | Gandy St | Exeter EX 4 3LS | 01392 667080 | all week |
| Quad Cinema | Cathedral Quarter, Market Pl | Derby DE1 3AS | 01332290606 | all week |
| JW3 | 341-351 Finchley Rd | London NW3 6ET | 020 7433 8988 | 19-23 June |
| Arts Picturehouse | 38-39 St Andrews St | Cambridge CB2 3AR | 0871 9025747 | all week |
| Phoenix | 4 Midland St | Leicester LE1 1TG | 0116 242 2280 | 17,18,20,21 June |
| Belmont Filmhouse | 49 Belmont St | Aberdeen AB10 1JS | 01224 343500 | all week |
Week starting 24th June
| Broadway Cinema | 14-18 Broad St | Nottingham NG1 3AL | 0115 952 6611 | all week |
| Warwick Arts Centre | Uni of Warwick | Coventry CV4 7AL | 024 7649600 | all week |
| Chichester Cinema | New Park Rd | Chichester PO19 7XY | 020 7930 3647 | all week |
Michelangelo Frammartino was born in Milan in 1968. He studied Architecture at the Politecnico di Milano, where he developed a passion for the relationship between physical space and photographic images, video and cinema. After graduation, he continued his studies at Civica Scuola del Cinema in Milan, where he designed video installations influenced by Studio Azzurro’s art research.
Frammartino’s debut IL DONO (2003), a no-budget feature film, shot in his parents’ village in Calabria, premiered at the Locarno Film Festival. It went on to win the Grand Prix at the Annecy Film Festival and the Jury Prize at both Thessaloniki and Warsaw.
Frammartino’s second feature LE QUATTRO VOLTE (2010) premiered in Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival. The film won the Europa Cinemas “Best European Film” award in Cannes and the main prize at CPH:DOX. It was also the 2010 Directors’ Fortnight “Coup de coeur”.
In 2013, Frammartino’s installation ALBERI, a 26-minute loop, premiered at MoMA PS1 and was subsequently shown at other museums, including Centre Pompidou’s 2021 Hors Pistes Festival.
Frammartino’s third feature film IL BUCO was shot in Southern Italy, in the neighbouring regions of Calabria and Basilicata, which continue to inspire him and where all his previous works were shot. With the approach of an anthropologist, Frammartino captures the traditional and transcendent with a simplicity and spirituality that is unique to his filmography.
2021 Il Buco
2013 Alberi (short documentary)
2010 Le Quattro Volte
2003 Il Dono (The Gift)
2002 Io Non Posso Entrare (short)
2001 Scappa Valentina (short)
1999 BIBIM (short – co-directed with Cafi Mohamud)
1997 L'Occhio e lo Spirito (short)
1995 Tracce (short)
| CAST | |
| Paolo Cossi | |
| Jacopo Elia | |
| Denise Trombin | |
| Nicola Lanza | |
| CREW | |
| Director | Michelangelo Frammartino |
| Cinematographer | Renato Berta |
| Script | Michelangelo Frammartino, Giovanna Giuliani |
| Editor | Benni Atria |
| Production Designer | Giliano Carli |
| Sound | Simone Paolo Olivero |
| Costume Designer | Stefania Grilli |
| Producers | Marco Serrecchia, Michelangelo Frammartino, Philippe Bober |
| Production Companies | Doppio Nodo Double Bind, Rai Cinema |
| Co-production Companies | Parisienne de Production, Essential Films |
| Supported by | MIC - Direzione Generale Cinema, Eurimages, Calabria Film Commission, Regione Lazio, CNC - Aide aux cinémas du monde - Centre National de la Cinématographie - Institut Français, Arte France Cinéma, ZDF/Arte, Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg, Cinereach |
| with the collaboration and patronage of: the Pollino National Park, the Comune di San Lorenzo Bellizzi and the Italian Speleological Society. | |
| 93 min/Italy/France/Germany/Italian with English subtitles/2021/4K | |
| Certificate U | |
I wrote a few words about the best film I saw at #LFF (or perhaps - spoiler alert - anywhere?!) this year, Michelangelo Frammartino's Il Buco.
Il Buco takes viewers on a meditative dive through the caves of Calabria. Michelangelo Frammartino travels 700-metres below earth for this captivating recreation of a 1961 cave expedition by a team of Italian speleologists.
Ben Nicholson, Sight & Sound
"Where nature, the universe, and humans converge… A mystical cinematic experience”
"In the vertical journey from life to death, when you surrender your entire being, your body and mind will experience a comforting bliss.”
Bong Joon-ho
“IL BUCO moved us very much. It is a truly cinematic achievement, a film that we believe should be seen on the biggest screen possible. It is an experience you must have in the theatre - so we really want to support the film - but also is a beautiful meditation on life and man’s relationship with nature and mortality. I had a transcendent experience watching the movie, deeply moving. It is not really about where the film comes from, what language they speak - it is this physical reaction that I have watching that film. It is a gut feeling.”
Chloe Zhao (as a Venice Film Festival juror)
“…masterful work of sound and sight.”
“…it stands powerfully on its own, offering breathtaking images of rural Italy and a subtle interrogation of the slow creep of change and modernity.”
“Il Buco is a soothing watch best viewed in the darkness of a cinema. It’s an immersive experience whose reward comes from the way Frammartino slowly builds on minutiae in work of the shepherd and the speleologists.”
Lovia Gyarkye, Hollywood Reporter
“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
“Frammartino handles the collision between a vanishing then and the encroaching now with a light touch, mournful yet not quite damning.”
“Frammartino trains his focus on rich symbols encapsulating the intrusion of modernity on tradition and antiquity, and he does so in uniquely striking visual terms that capitalize on his one-of-a-kind location shooting in Earth’s bowels.”
Charles Bramesco, The Playlist
★★★★
“in its meditative, unhurried fashion on the beauties of geological time...it was a pleasure to sit for a spell with Il Buco, to watch the old farmer, the young cavers and to listen to the sound of the wind in the trees.'
“It's not quite a documentary, yet nor is it exactly a narrative feature. It lives alone; the cinematic equivalent of a hermit on a mountaintop.”Xan Brooks, The Guardian
“Il Buco proves that cinema still has the capacity to astonish in a very innocent, childlike way as a medium in which light illuminates a black screen and creates beauty.”
Lee Marshall, Screen International
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Interview with Renato Berta in Variety
Interview with Michelangelo Frammartino in Cineuropa
Trailer on YouTube - link or embed
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