Il Buco

Il Buco (2021) is Michelangelo Frammartino's near-wordless drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. August 1961: a team of young cavers travels south to a remote Calabrian plateau to chart the Bifurto Abyss, one of the deepest caves in Europe.

There is almost no dialogue. The speleologists rope down, foot by foot, lanterns swallowed by black emptiness, while an old shepherd watches from above — the lone soul on this windswept high ground. Frammartino lets the film breathe through sound and texture: fog rolling over cattle, the scrape of rock, the silence of a 700-metre shaft. As the descent deepens, the shepherd's own life flickers out, and the two voids quietly rhyme.

The film took the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival and was acted entirely by local non-professionals. Plot, in any conventional sense, is gone — only light, stone and patience remain. It rewards viewers who already love the slow cinema of Béla Tarr or Carlos Reygadas and want a film whose great event is the journey down. Stream Il Buco (2021) online on iFILM.