THE HOLE

Film Info

Italy 2021 | 93 min. Director: Michelangelo Frammartino

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THE HOLE

Synopsis

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.

Another work of nearly wordless organic beauty that touches on the mystical, THE HOLE chronicles a visit through unknown depths of life and nature and parallels two great voyages to the interior.

Cast & Crew

Director

Michelangelo Frammartino
Producer

Marco Serrecchia, Michelangelo Frammartino, Philippe Bober
Screenwriter

Michelangelo Frammartino, Giovanna Giuliani
Director of photography

Renato Berta
Main Cast

Nicola Lanza (Zi' Nicola), Jacopo Elia (Speleologist), Denise Trombin (Speleologist), Leonardo Larocca (Speleologist), Paolo Cossi (Speleologist and drawer), Giuseppe Campolongo
Casting

Giovanna Giuliani
Editor (Cut)

Benni Atria
Sound

Simone Paolo Olivero, Florian Holzner, Marco Saitta, Ansgar Frerich, Paolo Benvenuti, Benni Atria
Production Design

Giliano Carli
VFX Supervisor

Gilberto Arpioni
Costume Design

Stefania Grilli

Director's comment

In January 2007, the mayor of the Calabrian village where I was filming LE QUATTRO VOLTE, took me on a tour of the Pollino.

“You must see the wonders of these mountains!”, he said. He brought me to a sinkhole where a meagre cut in the ground could be seen. I was perplexed, disappointed. The mayor, on the other hand, enthusiastic and proud, threw a large stone into that void. It got swallowed by darkness. The bottom was so deep that nothing could be seen nor heard.

That disappearance, that lack of response, gave me a very strong emotion. That strange place stuck with me, calling me back to it years later, to question it and create a project within the silent blackness of the Bifurto Abyss.

Biography

Michelangelo Frammartino is an Italian filmmaker and screenwriter, born in Milan to Calabrian parents in 1968.
Frammartino’s debut IL DONO (2003), a no-budget feature film, premiered at the Locarno Film Festival, won 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 Cannes Film Festival. The film won the Europa Cinemas “Best European Film” award in Cannes, and the main prize at CPH:DOX.
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, THE HOLE (Il Buco), was shot in Southern Italy, in the neighbouring regions of Calabria and Basilicata which keep inspiring 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.

FILMOGRAPHY:
2021 - IL BUCO, Feature
2013 - ALBERI, Short
2010 - LE QUATTRO VOLTE, Feature
2003 - IL DONO, Feature