Frammartino Digs Deep, But Barely Scratches the Surface
Michelangelo Frammartino’s Il Buco (“The Hole”) is a meditative journey into the center of the earth, replete with some of the year’s most gorgeous visuals and transportive sound design. The film recreates a real cave expedition in 1961, Calabria, Italy—observed by a weathered shepherd (Paolo Cossi) and his livestock, with whom he converses in guttural bursts that echo across the rocky hillsides.
Frammartino’s last feature was the quietly absorbing Le Quattro Volte (2011): unhurried, painterly cinema, much like Il Buco. For those who need drama, however, this intentionally opaque and plotless film may prove challenging: Frammartino—in tandem with cinematographer Renato Berta and sound designer Simone Paolo Olivero—delivers cinematic poetry … but ultimately, there’s more surface than depth.…...
Michelangelo Frammartino’s Il Buco (“The Hole”) is a meditative journey into the center of the earth, replete with some of the year’s most gorgeous visuals and transportive sound design. The film recreates a real cave expedition in 1961, Calabria, Italy—observed by a weathered shepherd (Paolo Cossi) and his livestock, with whom he converses in guttural bursts that echo across the rocky hillsides.
Frammartino’s last feature was the quietly absorbing Le Quattro Volte (2011): unhurried, painterly cinema, much like Il Buco. For those who need drama, however, this intentionally opaque and plotless film may prove challenging: Frammartino—in tandem with cinematographer Renato Berta and sound designer Simone Paolo Olivero—delivers cinematic poetry … but ultimately, there’s more surface than depth.…...
- 5/13/2022
- by Dylan Kai Dempsey
- IONCINEMA.com
New York-based distribution company Grasshopper Film and Gratitude Films have jointly acquired U.S. distribution rights to Italian director Michelangelo Frammartino’s Venice Special Jury Prize winner “Il Buco,” about a group of speleologists who in 1961 discover Europe’s deepest cave.
The deal was negotiated by Ryan Krivoshey of Grasshopper Film with Nadine Rothschild of Paris and Berlin-based Coproduction Office on the eve of the U.S. premiere of “Il Buco” at the New York Film Festival.
Gratitude, which is based in Los Angeles and Mumbai, is headed by Anu Rangachar, a producer and the former programmer for the Mumbai Film Festival.
With “Il Buco” Frammartino, whose dialogue-free “Le Quattro Volte” made a global splash in 2010, has segued with another similarly eclectic pic that has no dialogue or music.
His latest work reconstructs the young cave scientists’ journey to explore the depth of the Bifurto Abyss, 700 meters below Earth in the pristine Calabrian hinterland.
The deal was negotiated by Ryan Krivoshey of Grasshopper Film with Nadine Rothschild of Paris and Berlin-based Coproduction Office on the eve of the U.S. premiere of “Il Buco” at the New York Film Festival.
Gratitude, which is based in Los Angeles and Mumbai, is headed by Anu Rangachar, a producer and the former programmer for the Mumbai Film Festival.
With “Il Buco” Frammartino, whose dialogue-free “Le Quattro Volte” made a global splash in 2010, has segued with another similarly eclectic pic that has no dialogue or music.
His latest work reconstructs the young cave scientists’ journey to explore the depth of the Bifurto Abyss, 700 meters below Earth in the pristine Calabrian hinterland.
- 10/10/2021
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
If we believe the adage that the wish to climb a mountain comes about just because it’s there, perhaps it follows, not to be too glib about it, that a cave explorer mapping a hole in the ground does so because it’s not. Notions of absence — not just of solid ground, but of light and of life — as well as oppositions of up and down, ephemeral and eternal, high and low, infuse Michelangelo Frammartino’s “Il Buco” (“The Hole”), a docufiction that tenderly, wordlessly and rather too obliquely recreates a 1961 speleological expedition to measure the depth of an unexplored crevasse in Italy’s Calabria region.
As the first beautiful image, in a film composed entirely of beautiful images, fades slowly in, lagging behind the sound of chirruping crickets that faintly echo down from above, it’s like having your eyes adjust to sudden darkness. We are inside the hole,...
As the first beautiful image, in a film composed entirely of beautiful images, fades slowly in, lagging behind the sound of chirruping crickets that faintly echo down from above, it’s like having your eyes adjust to sudden darkness. We are inside the hole,...
- 9/4/2021
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Coproduction Office’s Italian cave drama has also sold to Denmark, Turkey and Taiwan.
Italian director Michelangelo Frammartino’s cave journey drama Il Buco has been racking up sales for the Paris and Berlin-based Coproduction Office ahead of its world premiere in Venice Competition this week.
Sales include to France (Les Films du Losange), UK (New Wave), Denmark (Ost for Paradis), ex-Yugoslavia (Demiurg), Turkey (Filmarti), Baltics (Must Kasi) and Taiwan (Hooray!).
Lucky Red will release the film in Italy in Q2 2022 as previously announced.
Set in the early 1960s, the film stars Paolo Cossi, Jacopo Elia, Denise Trombin and Nicola Lanzs.
Italian director Michelangelo Frammartino’s cave journey drama Il Buco has been racking up sales for the Paris and Berlin-based Coproduction Office ahead of its world premiere in Venice Competition this week.
Sales include to France (Les Films du Losange), UK (New Wave), Denmark (Ost for Paradis), ex-Yugoslavia (Demiurg), Turkey (Filmarti), Baltics (Must Kasi) and Taiwan (Hooray!).
Lucky Red will release the film in Italy in Q2 2022 as previously announced.
Set in the early 1960s, the film stars Paolo Cossi, Jacopo Elia, Denise Trombin and Nicola Lanzs.
- 9/1/2021
- by Geoffrey Macnab
- ScreenDaily
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