Il Buco

By Michelangelo Frammartino
Sunday 20.11.22

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.

This is a rare opportunity to watch Il buco at a Norwegian cinema. The film had its premiere in Cannes, where it also won the Special Jury prize.

About the filmmaker

Michelangelo Frammartino (b. 1968, Milan) studied Architecture at the Politecnico di Milano, where he developed a passion for the relationship between physical space and photographic images, video, and cinema. 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. His second feature, Le quattro volte (2010) premiered at Cannes Film Festival, won the Europa Cinemas “Best European Film” award in Cannes, and the main prize at CPH:DOX, and was the 2010 Directors’ Fortnight “Coup de coeur”. 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.